Genuine

Once in a rare while, we get people into appointive posts who are capable of weaving grand dreams from where they stand.

Early next year,   ground- breaking ceremonies will be held for what will aspire to be Asia’s entertainment capital. On 40 hectares land reclaimed from Manila Bay, massive construction work will begin on a project that will overshadow what Macau has. That project will be financed with $6 to $8 billion in committed direct foreign investment.

Over the 10-year period that the project is required to complete, up to $15 billion in foreign investments will be poured into new hotels, shopping areas, additional office space, amusement parks, convention centers, museums and leisure facilities. It will be the country’s window to the world.

The project is officially known as Bagong Nayong Pilipino-Manila Bay Entertainment City. I am sure, at some point, we will find a more convenient name for this enterprise other than that cumbersome bureaucratic nomenclature.

Let’s just call it Entertainment City in the meantime. That is at least better than calling it Pagcor City.

Calling it Pagcor City calls up images of high stakes gaming — something that gets the bishops unduly excited. Actually the project forecasts only a quarter of its potential revenues from gaming and related activities. The rest will come from family-oriented entertainment facilities similar to what we now see in Las Vegas.

It will be a state-of-the-art facility gathered around what could be one of the tallest towers in the world. The old Nayong Pilipino — a truly miniature garden showcasing our country’s sights and culture — will be resurrected in a grander, more 21st-century scale.

This project will be of such scale that it is expected to be the major magnet for a much larger tourism inflow. Manila is ideally situated as the hub of air traffic for the East Asian region — the fastest growing, most densely populated region of the world. China alone now has a tourism-inclined middle class of 80 million.

The massive tourist inflow into this Entertainment City should spill over throughout the entire archipelago. This is the reason why the League of Provinces of the Philippines recently commended the project’s realization and the man behind this grand idea: Pagcor Chairman Efraim Genuino.

When Genuino assumed the chair of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation, he brought big ideas to his new post. Under his imaginative leadership, the corporation was not only rescued from the financial doldrums. Its earnings for 2007 were double what it was in 2001. For his exemplary work for the gaming industry, the Pagcor chair has been awarded honorary citizen of Las Vegas.

Over and above doing what Pagcor usually does, making that corporation the top Philippine taxpayer, Genuino imagined something even bigger. He saw a thoroughly modern Asian city rising above Manila Bay.

It was a vision that was always at the top of his mind. He found the right area for it, had architects and urban planners conceptualize this new city, conferred with potential investors from all over the world. He just pushed and pushed and pushed. The grand vision was fully thought through, every detail refined and every business consideration attended to.

Genuino was simply tireless. He was obsessed. A grand thing like this one, a bold idea that decidedly steps out of the box, requires complete obsession. The man had it.

Eventually, the bold idea gained critical mass. Enough investors were drawn to support it. Domestic political support for the enterprise was overwhelming. The economics of the whole thing made more and more sense to all who looked at it closely and fairly.

Enough of attempting to pull our economy up by its bootstraps, building an irrigation system here and experimenting with hybrid rice there. If we remain within the old economic framework, we will be the Sick Man of Asia for the rest of this young century.

Our best bet for a dynamic future involves unleashing our service industries to the max. Our geography, our culture, our inclinations and, yes, our topographic limitations dictate that.

We will never be Asia’s agricultural superpower nor the region’s industrial base. But we can be its cosmopolitan core. Its center of leisure. Its cultural hub in the new century. We have the world-wise manpower for that.

Genuino understood all these. Even as the grand enterprise might have seemed a quixotic windmill at the onset, the man was not deterred.

A project of this scale, of this degree of boldness, required a leader of great passion. Genuino had it.

Something as imaginative as this one would surely attract resistance from the timid, from the parochial and from the small-minded. Genuino had the patience to do the intricate public diplomacy required to break down resistance to a revolutionary economic leap.

The billions that will go into the construction frenzy next year will come from private investors, and it will come at a time when our economy needs infra spending the most in order to offset the effects of a crisis-ridden global economy. Tens of thousands of high-grade jobs will be created because of this.

When ground is finally broken a few months from now, Genuino should wield a genuine gold shovel. He and the project he so stubbornly worked to realized deserve it.