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Incentivizing tourism
Michael Alan Hamlin
Now it's up to Congress
Senator Richard J. Gordon has been talking up his national tourism bill, which would reorganize the Department of Tourism, provide meaty incentives to foreign investors, and meaningfully promote the Philippines as a vacation and meeting hotspot. In a recent talk with potential investors, Gordon explained the bill’s purpose and promise in an effort to generate support among these important players.
Although the bill is extensive in scope and objective, Gordon made just three key points. He said first that his bill - which was passed by the Senate in the 13th Congress but was “held hostage” to other legislative priorities, in his view, by the House of Representatives - when enacted will provide an effective regulatory environment resulting in higher quality tourism facilities and services around the country.
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Posted
8/31/2007 6:04:07 PM |
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One year later
Michael Alan Hamlin
Auto demolition & country brand
Another year older and even wiser, my friend Brett M. Decker blew into town last week for his annual visit to the Philippines. In the past year, Decker completed a master’s degree in military strategy at the United States Naval War College, and became an adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. His full-time position is senior vice president at the Export-Import Bank of the United States, where he is in charge of communications. Ex-Im Bank does approximately $13 billion in trade-finance transactions a year, mostly in developing economies such as the Philippines.
Decker first became intimately acquainted with this country as editorial page writer for The Asian Wall Street Journal (Requires subscription.). During his time at the Journal in Hong Kong, he frequented the Philippines sometimes as often as twice a month, most often to visit with friends, and frequently to interview senior government officials and legislators. He has assembled an extensive collection of Filipiniana, including one of the best libraries anywhere.
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Posted
8/27/2007 2:17:59 PM |
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All shook up in the road
Orly Mercado
In the early nineties, I struck up a conversation with a businessman on a plane ride to Cebu city. He introduced me to his American partner. I asked them what line of business they were in. The visitor was filled with enthusiasm. He said he was going to bring in machinery that could recycle asphalt pavements. From what I gathered, they had the technology to extract the asphalt from roads that are being repaired and reuse it.
Without meaning to dampen their enthusiasm, I expressed my reservations about their venture. I thought that most of our asphalt roads are really made of substandard materials to begin with. I half jokingly said that some roads look like the asphalt binder was similar to artificial coloring in food products. So what was there to extract and recycle?
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Posted
8/22/2007 8:00:16 PM |
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How long?
Michael Alan Hamlin
It's real progress that counts
The cover of the August 6 issue of FORTUNE depicts the British Pound and the American Dollar as professional boxers, accompanied by the headline, “London vs. New York: Will the real financial capital of the world please stand up?” For those of you who have read the article , you must have been impressed as I was with the recounting of London’s march to preeminence among the world’s leading financial centers.
Written by Peter Gumbel, the article begins by recounting remarks by then British Prime Minister-to-be Gordon Brown at a recent black-tie London dinner for bankers. He proclaimed to those in attendance, “Today, over 40% of the world’s foreign equities are traded here, more than New York. Over 30% of the world’s currency exchanges take place here, more than New York and Tokyo combined. And while New York and Tokyo are reliant mainly on their large American and Asian domestic markets, 80% of our business is international.”
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Posted
8/10/2007 3:39:09 PM |
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The dog ate my homework
Orly Mercado
It sounds utterly ridiculous, but when you think hard about it, there is an explanation. When a controversy over a multi-million dollar bilateral deal is reduced to “looking for the Philippine government’s copy of a contract signed with China,” it looks sinister, not funny. The contracts were reportedly “stolen” after being signed.
The knee-jerk reaction to this incident may be to shake one’s head and blame the bureaucracy for incompetence. Experience tells us it is not so. We have laws and regulations about fidelity in the handling of government records. They are largely ignored or considered as mere suggestions. One would wonder, that for all the computerization and management systems we have spent money and time for, we still have shocking examples of incompetence. But to assume incompetence is to be naïve.
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Posted
8/7/2007 1:41:22 PM |
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President's Club
Michael Alan Hamlin
The Philippine is just one market for this mini-multinational
Earlier this month, approximately 13,000 partners, industry experts, speakers, exhibitors, business executives and others attended the annual Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver, Colorado. Among the 7,300 Microsoft partners in attendance were a number of Philippine-based software developers. They included Gurango Software.
In the interest of full disclosure, Gurango Software is a client of my firm. I first met up with its founder, Joey Gurango, when he was regional director for products and services for Microsoft Business Solutions. Another one of those serial entrepreneurs, as a young professional Gurango co-founded Match Data Systems, a U.S.-based software developer. That firm was later merged with Great Plains Software, which itself was eventually acquired by Microsoft.
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Posted
8/6/2007 6:45:38 PM |
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The center of the center
Michael Alan Hamlin
The environment is a profoundly unique resource for the Philippines
I wrote this column on the veranda of the Club Paradise clubhouse in Busuanga, Palawan. The staff informed me that the weather the week prior was cool and stormy, but it was scorching as I labored away. Because it is the off season, there were only around 20 guests on the island last week, and significant renovation work was taking place, and it included the Sunrise Beach cottages where we usually stay. This, time, we were on Sunset Beach.
If I am counting correctly, last week's trip was the eighth time we’ve stayed on this lovely island for a few, too-short days. Last year, when our visit coincided with the tail end of the peak season, I wrote that the resort appeared to be experiencing a surge in demand, with close to a full house of Asian, European, and American tourists. I also noted that the coral reef was making an impressive rebound, several years after the area around the resort was declared a wildlife preserve and fishing was prohibited.
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Posted
8/2/2007 5:19:11 PM |
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