2025 will be an exciting year. It is the year the non-profit I founded, Go Negosyo, turns 20 years old. How time flies, indeed. I can still remember when former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo asked me to be her adviser on entrepreneurship and started me off on this journey. I have met many remarkable people who shared my advocacy to uplift Filipinos through entrepreneurship. We believed then, as we do now, that empowering Filipinos with access to the necessary tools for successful entrepreneurship – money, markets and mentorship – will help millions escape poverty and live comfortable, prosperous lives.
2024 itself was a year that will be hard to top. Most companies did well last year. Our family companies, Concepcion Industrial Corp. and RFM, did extremely well, experiencing good cash flow and ending the year with no debt. I would like to think our companies are the bellwether for consumer confidence, since we deal with products in and adjunct to the consumer goods segment.
It turns out we’re not just indulging in wishful thinking or confirmation bias: the rise in consumer confidence is reflected in numbers from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. Their fourth quarter surveys reflect an improvement in both consumer sentiment and business optimism, citing “higher and additional sources of income, more working family members and more available jobs and permanent employment” among consumers, and the “anticipation of an increase in demand for certain goods and services and the related seasonal uptick in business activities” on the business side.
So it is quite fortuitous that Go Negosyo will celebrate its landmark year in 2025, which I firmly believe will be a better year for the Philippine economy.
The brisk activity in the MSME sector is not just anecdotal. While the Covid-19 pandemic saw some businesses close shop in 2020, this was followed by a rebound in 2021, which has been sustained with a steady increase in the number of MSMEs through 2022 and 2023. I expect 2024 to report no less impressive numbers. Judging by the number of attendees we’ve had in the almost-weekly public entrepreneurship events we’ve organized and participated in last year, there were more Filipinos who threw their hats in the ring rather than those who threw in the towel on their businesses.
Our mall-based event, 3M on Wheels, managed to provide mentoring to more than 6,000 active or aspiring entrepreneurs across the 15 events we’ve had across the country. Our national summits – where we zero in on topics like OFWs, women entrepreneurs, tourism, digital tech and MSME issues – had more than 8,000 attendees. My staff often tell me that there would be people who line up early in the morning for our events (there were even a couple of instances where they lined up the day before!).
These attendees are in addition to the micro and small entrepreneurs (MSEs) we’ve reached via the First Lady’s LAB for All social and medical services caravan, and our supporting events where we provide entrepreneurship mentoring alongside the outreach projects of our partner government agencies. Add to this the thousands of senior high school students we’ve inspired with dreams of entrepreneurship through the Youthpreneur program and the established entrepreneurs we’ve helped scale up through our regular KMME program.
We’ve even expanded our reach beyond our shores and to our neighbors in the ASEAN through our ASEAN Mentorship for Entrepreneurs program and soon, through the full implementation of the ASEAN Food Security Alliance.
It will be just in time, too, as next year will be the Philippines’ turn to host the ASEAN. As Philippines chairman of the ASEAN Business Advisory Council (BAC) – wherein the private sector provides guidance to governments of the ASEAN – it will be my distinct honor to host once again the numerous events we have lined up for the ASEAN BAC, which will be held alongside the ASEAN meetings.
Our allies in the private sector have continued to support us. We’ve even welcomed new partners because of our expanded scope covering agripreneurship and the youth. We’re meeting new allies who believe that we must embrace our farmers and make them part of our business models so they can have a chance at success and profitability.
From our interactions with our counterparts in the ASEAN, we found that the Philippines is not the only one that is struggling in agriculture. We each have our own problems, and we need to come together and share knowledge and resources to solve them.
It’s been 20 years and still our to-do list continues to grow. I suppose this is because the impact of MSMEs on the economy is just so far-reaching that we continuously find new avenues where we can help strengthen and empower them, and where their growth can produce the most impact.
In microfinance, for example, we must help lenders provide more capital to MSEs. Lending to these businesses can have a multiplier effect on improving communities, empowering women and creating jobs. I am convinced that as long as there is a mentor to these MSEs, there will be confidence among the banks to lend to them. And if there is a big-brother business that is helping them along by integrating them into their business model, then so much the better. It is a hard reality that banks and financing institutions are risk-averse; having a big-brother company beside them mitigates that risk.
But I’d say the biggest change we’re seeing right now is the continuing shift to digital media. We all know how fintech is making it easier for small entrepreneurs to access capital and process payments, but the biggest effect is in marketing. Micro and small entrepreneurs can now DIY their way through social media marketing; the tools are there, and they just need some know-how on how to use it for their businesses. The old principles still apply: you have to know how to position your product to target the right market. This shift has been applied to our mentoring; we now have content creators and influencers among our roster of resource speakers and their numbers continue to grow.
It’s going to be an exciting 2025 and I can’t wait to get started.