Private-public cooperation key to speedy recovery – Zobel

Stronger cooperation between government and the private sector, particularly in promoting investments, would jumpstart the fast recovery of the domestic economy from the negative impact of the pandemic, the head of one of the country’s biggest conglomerates said.

In his speech during the recent Pilipinas Conference on the “Key Role of the Business Sector” hosted by the Stratbase Albert del Rosario Institute,  Ayala Corp. chairman and CEO Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala said: “We all have to move to an investment–led push, and hopefully it turns more societal as more jobs get created, there’s more spending power, and then we start to get this cycle of people getting an economy that is beginning to reawaken.”

“The whole investment led component of our economic equation of our country has to be jumpstarted. The private sector has a role and the public sector has a role, so all of us have to use whatever balance sheets we have, matched up, with the changing nature of demand, which will increase again, to start reallocating resources and building new jobs and getting that cycle moving again.”

“The public sector as well have their own balance sheet, their own spending, and we would hope that they would also be catalysts to jumpstart spending at a time like this to get infrastructure moving. This is a symbiotic relationship,” he said.

“It’s not only FDI, but we hope that we can create that kind of structure that will be internationally accepted as an attractive framework for people to come in and invest in our country. We should all be encouraging that, but at the same time, local capital formation where private sector companies begin to move forward in terms of capital, and the public sector as well, to start to reallocate to jumpstart the economy,” Zobel said.