Competent

It is never easy to attract top-notch executive talent from the private sector. They have to give up so much for the chance to serve the Republic.

We know how wide the pay disparity is at the upper echelons. The years contributed to public service translates into a lot of foregone income.

If the executive talent is a shareholder of a successful private company, he is obliged to divest his interests. Our laws have made it so hard to attract private sector talent into the government service.

Serving government is a challenge. There is a maze of regulations that get in the way of getting things done. There is often too much politics to endure. At the slightest excuse, one is bound to get dragged to the ombudsman – often by entrenched interests in the public agencies threatened by reform.

Because of the income-loss and the many hazards of serving government, our technocracy is often recruited from public universities. This is why many of our outstanding technocrats come from the University of the Philippines. They were receiving public sector pay to begin with and used to austere living.

I once had a conversation with Alberto Lina who had to go through the tedious process of divesting ownership of companies he founded just to serve a few months as Customs commissioner. He half-regretted doing that.

It is therefore remarkable, considering the odds, that President BBM managed to attract to government service two competent executives over the past several weeks: Francis Tiu Laurel Jr. and now Frederick Go.

Laurel grew Frabelle Corporation into one of the country’s largest companies, with interests in fishing fleets, food processing and property development. I knew BBM has been attracting Laurel to serve government and it took the latter much time to prepare his businesses for it.

There was some reflex protests from the usual suspects when his appointment was announced. In the end, however, everybody had to concede the man’s competence. He had built a towering business empire after all.

Like Laurel, Go has massive testimony of business acumen. At the time he accepted a full-time government appointment, he was involved in up to a hundred successful companies. He had built up the property giant Robinsons Land Corporation (RLC) from scratch. RLC is now a P223-billion company running 53 malls and over a hundred property development projects.

Again, many in the business community knew from before BBM took his oath of office that he was interested in recruiting cousins Lance Gokongwei and Frederick Go to serve government. Lance, for his part, had ten thousand things on his plate and begged off. Go accepted an advisory role with the BBM administration – although it was clear government will immensely benefit from his talents if he agreed to a full-time role.

BBM cleared the way so that government could best benefit from Go’s talents. The President issued Executive Order No. 49 setting up the Office of the Special Assistant to the President for Investment and Economic Affairs (OSAPIEA) and named Go to head it. This decision has been almost universally welcomed by the business community.

The term “presidential assistant” might be a little misleading. Go is appointed to head the entire economic team of this administration. He is the economic czar who will undertake the urgent task of harmonizing our economic policies to make possible a unified and comprehensive development strategy.

Under previous presidents, the Finance secretary was de facto head of the economic team. Carlos Dominguez, with his close relationship to Rodrigo Duterte, played this role to the hilt in the previous administration. Ben Diokno either did not have enough executive energy or complete access to the Chief Executive to continue playing this role.

Some have argued that Go should simply have been given the NEDA to do what needs to be done. But NEDA is largely a research agency without the clout to force other related agencies into the same line of march. In his freshly created post, Go could whip the other economic agencies into line and open a new horizon of urgently needed reforms to get our economy going.

Although on paper the Philippine economy will likely have the highest growth rate in the region, we need to deal with awesome structural issues that kept our share of investment flows low, our exports flat and our agriculture stagnant. We need a burst of policy imagination to shake things up. Someone with Go’s relative youth, profound business insight and proven track record might be able to do it.

Go apparently has the full confidence of the President. That is important, considering how terribly politicized policy reform could be in this country.

The President cannot directly manage all areas of policy. That is simply physically impossible. The President, too, does not seem inclined to micro-manage. We saw that through his stint as concurrent agriculture secretary.

A lot of changes need to happen in our policy and in the ease of doing business to guide our economy towards sustainable growth. Go has the designation, the control over turf and the view of the horizon to make our economy more dynamic – or at the very least more attractive to investments.

No ifs and buts about it: Go will be guided by real-world business concerns in reforming our economic policy architecture. That is the way it should be.

The question that remains, however, is whether our bureaucracy is ready for the real world.