Traders reveal ‘inclusive business’ practices

CEBU, Philippines - Certain trading firms are now incorporating inclusive business concept in their business strategies to integrate the low-income segment or the so-called base-of-the-pyramid (BoP) within their value chains.

According to a factsheet from the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), inclusive businesses attain commercial financial returns while addressing systemic problems of poverty reduction and inclusive growth in scale.

Representatives from several firms covering the food, hotel, and export industries were invited in a recent PBSP meeting to talk on how they mix this new concept in their businesses in a way that creates shared value to suppliers, consumers, distributors and employees.

Chief finance officer Ysmael Baysa of Jollibee Foods Corporation, a fast food market leader operating a network of over 750 stores in the Philippines, said 20 percent of their demand for onions is now sourced from small-scale Filipino farmers.

These farmers, Cabinet Secretary Jose Rene Almendras reinforced, cultivate their farms within less than one hectare of land.

Almendras lauded the corporation’s practice of diversifying their supply sources to include small farmers and hopes to replicate this idea with the rest of the companies in the country.

Meanwhile, Atty. Lucas Nunag, president of Amarela Resort in Bohol, claimed they did not come up with the idea of inclusive business until they knew of its potential benefits.

He remarked that for their hotel-resort company, there is broad disparity in the various educational attainments of their employees with even some of the employed personnel unable to finish elementary education. 

Most of the workforce was able to enroll to Pag-ibig, SSS and Philhealth for the first time, he added.

Nunag also belongs to a foundation which operates a city hotel where 60 percent of the employees are hearing-impaired.

Thanking Tourism Secretary Ramon Jimenez Jr. for being supportive to Bohol tourism, Nunag also acknowledged Cebu for being able to bring in tourists to their neighboring province.

Venus Genson, president of Philexport Cebu and Venus Group of Companies, for her part, presented few of the challenges some of the small entrepreneurs face when seeking financial assistance for their businesses.

“They’re saying there’s a lot of money, but is it accessible?,” Genson pointed out.

She said a financing scheme must be devised to fit the needs of small and medium enterprises, further stating that it’s impossible for little farmers, for instance, to meet the bank’s requirement of presenting audited financial statements for two or three years.

She said that she had used her personal finances at one point to back a road project that would improve the accessibility to her little business that has, according to her, produced 22 college graduates in the area. (FREEMAN)