Made in the Philippines

Going over that list of the country’s 50 richest, drawn up by Forbes magazine, you can see where money is mostly being made here: retail, property development, mining.

 People might quibble over the magazine’s basis for the ranking – certain individuals are way too low on the list – but regardless of the ranking, it’s clear that the fortunes of most of our fabulously wealthy were not built on manufacturing and export.

 Of the top 50, only a few are in manufacturing. I will cite only those who founded the ventures themselves or developed their own brands instead of buying into an established enterprise.

 With the exception of Unilab’s Campos clan and Mariano Tan Jr., the manufacturers on the list are in the food business: taipan John Gokongwei Jr., who started out with corn processing and launched Blend 45 coffee; Betty Ang of Lucky Me, MY San and Nissin; Carlos Chan of Oishi; Jacinto Ng of Rebisco (now much diversified) and Alfredo Yao of Zesto (also diversified).

 The owners of the country’s most successful homegrown fast-food chains, Tony Tan Caktiong of Jollibee and Edgar Sia of Mang Inasal, are on the list.

 One educator at least made it: Lourdes Montinola of Far Eastern University.

Only one is truly multinational: Enrique Razon and his container ports (now he’s into casinos). Tan Caktiong comes close, maintaining Jollibee branches in several countries with large Filipino migrant populations. Several others have a smaller presence or are just starting to venture overseas.

 There are inspiring rags-to-riches stories in the top 50 – the start of the Mercury Drug Store chain, for example, and Zesto.

San Miguel beer is known abroad (but the original brewer was European), and foreigners are fascinated by the appeal of Jollibee’s sweet spaghetti. We need role models, however, in selling the world a recognizable Pinoy brand, conceptualized, developed and manufactured in the Philippines.

*      *      *

Never mind developing an iPad, a Rolex, Lexus or Rolls-Royce, or starting a global chain such as Zara or Topshop. We should at least be able to produce our own quality construction tools.

We import too many items, with the cheapest sourced from China, India and other developing countries such as Sri Lanka and Vietnam, and the high-value, state-of-the art stuff from the advanced economies.

Sarao has come up with an air-conditioned jeepney and is moving into electric-powered vehicles. But it hasn’t followed the innovation trajectory of the Jeep brand, whose World War II vehicles inspired the gaudy jeepney.

Our gunsmiths in Danao, Cebu have not aspired for innovative, cutting-edge design, and the government has not encouraged the not-so-clandestine activity to go mainstream and serve as the foundation for a local defense industry.

Being an archipelago with one of the world’s most extensive coastlines, we should be a global leader in shipbuilding. Today we have shipbuilding facilities – operated by South Korean giant Hanjin.

Equipment for heavy industries and even the smaller machinery for food processing are mostly imported. We have local manufacturers of industrial ovens, mixers and related equipment, and the products and maintenance services are quite reliable. But I’ve seen the machinery being fabricated, in surroundings that bring to mind scenes from before the Industrial Revolution. Recently I watched men at work in a dingy, badly ventilated fabricating plant, shaping “tasty” bread pans by hand.

I don’t know how many Filipinos take courses in mechanical engineering. I know a woman who obtained a degree in this area and told me upon graduation that she had no idea how she managed to pass. A possible explanation is that she graduated from one of the diploma mills in Manila’s University Belt. Having failed to imbibe any useful knowledge in her years of higher education, she never became a practicing engineer.

The Taiwanese sell us machinery for assembly-line vacuum packing and freeze-drying. We import machinery to make, literally, nuts and bolts and other basic materials for construction. Why can’t we make the machinery ourselves?

Perhaps the lack of interest in manufacturing could be traced to a long tradition of the country being used mainly as a source of raw materials, first by Spain, and then the United States and briefly Japan. We have been supplying raw materials to the world for centuries, but not finished products. Colonial rulers did not encourage innovation and manufacturing, or small and medium enterprises, which could have empowered the masses.

We were mostly surprised by the global success of Ipanema footwear. Before the Brazilian brand became ubiquitous, if someone had told us that people would be willing to pay an average of P1,000 for a pair of flip-flops, the plain version of which we could get for P50 in the palengke, we would have laughed.

Since we’re not big on machine-made products, we can specialize in bespoke items, like the French, Italian and British makers of luxury goods. But this is also not happening.

A Latin American expat with expertise in alcoholic beverages told me he was disappointed not to find a good Philippine rum, when Pinoys consume a lot of the stuff and we are a major producer of sugarcane. The expat, who knows the industry well, sees no reason why we can’t produce the same top-quality rums as those from Jamaica or Barbados. We just have to learn proper distillation, he said.

We can look on the bright side and consider that there’s a wide room for growth in many sectors. It’s not too late to start selling the world more goods that are proudly made in the Philippines.