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Are Filipinos Biased Against Entrepreneurship?

March 26th, 2006 · 7 Comments

Carla’s entry about an article on entrepreneurship led me to the blog of Tony Lopez of BizNewsAsia.

In his articles, Lopez quotes Senator Manny Villar, who thinks that the most significant challenge that Filipino entrepreneurship faces is our own mindset regarding it:

The senator wondered why the Philippines haven’t progressed all these years. And he has this theory:

“It is because there is bias against entrepreneurship in the Philippines, and that is why, to me, we have not moved forward.”

He elaborates:

“ We were told by our parents to study very hard so that one day we can get a job. And we tell our children to study very hard so that they can have a job, the children of our children.”

“We tell the children that they should study to have a job. And this is passed on from generation to generation to generation, and that is why we have become a nation of employees. We like to serve. We like to be employed.”
“If we cannot find employment in the Philippines, then we go out of the country. And there, in the other countries, we try to find employment.”
In Divisoria, he recalls, “I saw the difference between a Chinese and a Filipino vendor.”

“The Chinese -Filipino, and he would tell me, one day I want to become the biggest this, the biggest that. But when you talk to a Filipino vendor, he would tell you, as soon as my children graduate, I can retire, I will retire.”

“Among us Filipinos, at the age of 30, we are asked, why haven’t you got a job? But among the Chinese, they are asked, why haven’t you got a business, yet?”

“To me, unless you are able to change this, my dear friends, we cannot move this country forward.”

I totally agree with Senator Villar’s sentiment. We have always been a nation not only of employees, but of avid consumers, throwing our money on what capitalists say “we must have.” We also have a penchant for buying real property, treating them as “assets” without really knowing how to make the property income-generating for the long-term.

However, I hope Senator Villar also understands that there exists a very high barrier to business entry in the country, with lots of exorbitant (not to mention ineffective and unnecessary) fees on different kinds of permits. To me, if Senator Villar wants to encourage entrepreneurship in the country, they must first demolish these redundant barriers to business entry.

Otherwise our people will just settle with being employees, while our underground non-tax-paying economy will just continue to grow and grow.

Read more about entrepreneurship in Tony Lopez’s blog:

Get rich, put up a business

The age of the Filipino Entrepreneur

Tags: Ekonomiya · Negosyo · Uncategorized

7 responses so far ↓

  • 1 pinoy // Mar 26, 2006 at 7:56 pm

    I believe i also has something to do with our attitude as a people. We don’t want to take risks. Because we don’t to take the risk, we become copycats. We put our money where we believe it will have high returns simply because our neighbor dd it. It’s that sari sari store mentality. It’s more of the gaya gaya mentality. Our OFWs invest their earning only on jeepneys or tricycles. The family spends the rest of their remittances at the malls.

    $10B worth of remittances last year! Imagine if this money is re invested to more productive endeavors?

  • 2 Jon Limjap // Mar 27, 2006 at 1:41 pm

    pinoy,

    Yep, nanghihinayang din ako dun sa remittances. If even 10 percent of that was spent in long-term investment within the country, laking pera nun sana na lalago.

    As for the sari-sari store mentality, guess what Jinky Pacquiao put up with her husband’s money? :p

    I’m glad, however, that there seems to be a steady rise of groups and organizations that seek to promote entrepreneurship and financial education amongst Filipinos. So there’s hope. I just hope that these efforts bear fruit before its too late.

  • 3 mayet // Mar 27, 2006 at 2:52 pm

    small businesses are not treated very well in this country. naka-focus lahat sa MNCs na kung iisipin kahit gano man kaliit yung ibang businesses, nagbabayad din yun ng taxes and nagpo-provide ng employment. what pisses me off the most is that yung maliliit na businesses sila pa yung diligent sa pagbabayad ng taxes while some of those large corporations maraming tinatago. and applying for a business permit would usually take sooo long (here in bacolod, i don’t know sa iba). sana nga talaga may mga support groups naman for small businesses.

  • 4 Jon Limjap // Mar 29, 2006 at 10:02 am

    mayet,

    That’s exactly my point. The government should make it easier for SMEs to set up.

    AT present, I admire DTI - Philippine Trade Training Center’s efforts: they are offering several half-to-three day seminars on various business-related topics, which range from 50 pesos to no more than 4000 pesos for some five-day topics. You can access scehdules for these trainings at this url: http://www.business.gov.ph/Trade_Events_.php?categoryGroup=Local%20Trainings%20and%20Seminars

    For support groups, search for these groups in Yahoo! Groups (groups.yahoo.com) for discussions on personal finance, investment, trading and entrepreneurship:
    EntrepLink
    Pwede Na! Personal Finance

    Hope these help.

  • 5 Crissy // Apr 1, 2006 at 1:12 pm

    This was the topic in Real Stories with Loren Legarda last night. She had a panel interview featuring Joey Concepcion, Cecilio Pedro (of Lamoiyan/hapee), Vivian Tan of Entrepreneurs’ School of Asia (formerly known as Thames, she’s also the daughter of Lucio Tan) and Ronald Pineda of Folded and Hung. I appreciate the optimism of the panelists, and they admit that people are afraid to get into their own businesses.

  • 6 jozzua // May 25, 2006 at 1:40 pm

    I believe there has been a resurgence of interest for Philippine Entrepreneurship in the last year or so but the support has definitely been lacking. As the Google trends indicate, the word ‘entrepreneurship’ were searched mostly by Filipinos. This has actually lead our company to try and marketing Philippine eCommerce services. We’ve had lukewarm interest so far.

    However, if you do check on the Entrepreneur Support Groups such as Entreplink (as Mr. Limjap indicated), it is quite lively and opportunities do abound. I think the seeds have been planted. Whether the trends bear fruit, we would see in the following years.

  • 7 Filipinos and entrepreneurship: What’s the real score? | Filipino Voices // Jul 18, 2008 at 5:34 pm

    [...] fact, business-oriented. This is in stark-contrast to the often maligned notion of the Filipino as culturally biased against entrepreneurship, and having a seek-employment mentality as opposed to a business-oriented [...]

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