NEDA chief urges employers to invest more for job creation

MANILA, Philippines - Employers are being urged to invest more in businesses that could create high-quality jobs that would lead to greater economic growth.

Socioeconomic Planning Secretary and National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) director general Arsenio M. Balisacan said that government has already outlined the strategies to accelerate job creation and to improve the labor and employment situation in the country.

“These strategies include continuous build-up of capital, promotion of priority sectors, stable macroeconomic fundamentals, investment in research and development (R&D) in the agriculture, industry and services sectors, and reducing the cost of doing business,” Balisacan added.

He cautioned that the generation of remunerative employment remains a big challenge in the country.

Data shows that the rate of employment generation has not kept pace with the labor force growth such that there is still a large stock of unemployed.

Speaking at the just-concluded 35th National Conference of Employers, Balisacan explained to the employers the country’s need for greater support for economic sectors with high growth potentials.

“Investing in manufacturing, tourism, information technology-business process management (IT-BPM), construction, logistics, and agribusiness can provide remunerative jobs for a great number of the poor,” he said.

Under the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2011-2016 Midterm Update, the government aims to reduce the unemployment rate from seven percent in 2012 to 6.5 to 6.7 percent in 2016.

An improvement in the quality of employment would also be reflected through a reduction in underemployment rate from the current 20 percent to about 17 percent in 2016.

“We hope that the Employers’ Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) would continue supporting us in our efforts to generate high-quality and remunerative employment that is key to rapid poverty reduction,” Balisacan said.

The other week, the World Bank likewise called for reforms that could lead to increase in employment and a reduction in poverty.

World Bank lead economist in the Philippines Karl Kendrick Chua said that the biggest problem is the lack of jobs.

Chua said that structural reforms were needed to increase employment and reduce poverty.

“More and more jobs can be created by accelerating reforms to protect property rights, promote more competition, and simplify regulations while sustainably ramping up public investments in infrastructure, education and health,” the economist added.

The World Bank’s key challenge to the Philippine government is how to accelerate inclusive growth, the type that creates more and better jobs and reduces poverty.

Region-wide, the outlook for the rest of the region is moving in somewhat similar directions.

The World Bank said that East Asia Pacific countries could not afford the growth slowdowns observed in many middle-income countries.

In fact, the Philippines and Malaysia were singled out as more that half of their workforce were in wage and salaried employment.

Other challenges to the Philippines and the rest of the region are: slow structural transformation; restrictive business environments; skills shortage and mismatches in the labor market and  moderating economic growth and intense international competition while labor cost advantage starts to erode.