Let us buy Filipino

I remember that among the first few articles I wrote for this column, years ago, was about the Filipino First policy of the late Pres. Carlos P. Garcia. It dwelt more on my boyhood impression of the administration of the Boholano leader. There was not much philosophy to say in that write up because, after all, I was just in my primary school when Garcia became our president. Within that limited context and given my youthful perception, I came to appreciate that policy of Pres. Garcia, as an expression of nationalism of the highest order.

What was the driving motivation of the Filipino First policy? Couched in just two words, the message was very clear. Its profundity was in its simplicity. The president, in unmistakable language, asked that all citizens of this country put anything Filipino ahead of everything foreign. Thus, Filipino first.

My memory had it that the policy was supposed to be more practiced in commercial transactions. It was more evident in business dealing consumer items even if it was also supposed to cover services. For instance, where there were goods for sale in the market, some of which were produced in foreign lands and others by Filipino manufacturers, we, Pres. Garcia urged, were to prefer buying the Filipino product.

I discerned that if Filipinos would choose locally made goods over imported ones, they would achieve two things. We were, first, supposed to pay cheaper cost and therefore enjoy some savings and second, help our local manufacturers improve both in their system and quality. The latter though was the ultimate objective. With more industries set up in the country, availing of local manpower and raw materials, our march for growth and development would have been spurred.

My article, written some four decades after the policy was pronounced, was actually prodded by what I observed in the malls. Perhaps, because Garcia had long been dead, the Filipino was no longer first. In plain view, we did not anymore buy Filipino made goods in preference over imported ones.

Factually speaking, what I saw then disappointed me no end. In most shelves where items of common daily use were sold, I could not find a Philippine manufactured product anymore. There was no Philippine made fluorescent bulb that I wanted buy the day before I wrote my article. Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia were the countries of origin of those available bulbs.

Shortly after putting my thoughts in this column, I tried to actualize the idea. My experiment was crude and unscientific but what the heck. I proceeded to buy a pair of leather shoes made in Carcar, then only a town, and two other imported pairs, a Florsheim and a Pabder, that went beyond what my limited budget could really afford. I selected Carcar, not only because my good friend Atty. Boy Alo calls it his home, but because its reputation as a source of good shoes was spreading. The prices were much in favor of the locally made ones. In point of savings, how could you compare a P1,200 pair of shoes to that of a P5,000 and a P8,000?

To answer the question of quality I used them in more or less equal times. Believe me, my Carcar made shoes outlasted the imported ones. The foreign labeled shoes retired months ahead of the local. To my happy discovery, the cheap beat the expensive.

If we only heeded the Filipino First policy of Pres. Garcia from the day it was promulgated up the present, the call of a boycott against Chinese made products would have been irrelevant. Many local investors, assured of the support of their countrymen, would have opened more factories and generated hundreds of thousands of job opportunities. Filipino first would have, all the more, allowed the Carcar City shoe makers to scale the high standards of worldwide competition as to seize the prominence of Florsheim and Padder or would have boosted enough the advantage of Concepcion group of industries to dislodge from the market those made in China or would have provided the opportunity for the Guevara company to prevent the inflow of Cherry cars.

We do not need any pronouncement from Malacañang for us to buy Filipino. For our country’s sake, let us buy foreign made products ONLY when we cannot find those which are made by Filipinos in Filipino factories.