SOME BUSINESS IDEAS THAT CAN HELP THE PHIL. PROGRESS FASTER

A Voice from America
By Ernie D. Delfin

SOME BUSINESS IDEAS THAT CAN HELP
THE PHILIPPINES PROGRESS ECONOMICALLY

While the presidential candidates are preoccupied in their early political campaigns and many Filipinos are engaged in heated debates on constitutional issues surrounding the Davide impeachment or other hot political issues that are often accompanied by grandstanding of many politicians in zarzuela-like atmosphere, I would like to advance some outside-the-box-ideas with a faint hope that our “honorable” congressmen and senators, the presidential candidates as well as businessmen will consider my business proposals when they are in a more productive moods.

It’s indeed everybody’s knowledge that the Overseas Filipinos, the so-called modern day heroes, now numbering over 7 million people, remitting over $7 billion a year back to the Philippines, an staggering foreign exchange that has kept the country afloat for many years now. With that much money, however, how come the Philippines seemingly cannot show many concrete or tangible signs of infrastructures that sustain local businesses or livelihood projects in many provinces where these Overseas Filipinos come from? The only structures visible are newly built bungalows for OFW families that replaced old nipa huts. Is it because almost all these monies are used primarily for consumer goods and practically nothing invested for capitalized expenditures, such as tools or machineries for the production of goods and services? If this observation is true, national leaders must work overtime to change the application of these $7 billion OFW remittances. The OFs cannot afford to be doing those contractual foreign jobs the next 20 or 100 years! There are too much social costs, spelled tragedy, associated with OFW children when one or two parents are working abroad. We have to develop industries and livelihood projects within our own country to bring back our OFWs, the sooner the better!

I believe it is a wise idea to allocate a small and reasonable percentage of those OFW remittances into some kind of a “mutual or cooperative fund” under a highly credible and competent manager with the highest integrity wherein returning OFW (or their dependents) can borrow, as members, some money from such funds to capitalize any entrepreneurial or livelihood projects whenever they decide to do so.

Another timely business idea is to make and market the Philippines as a retirement paradise for Overseas Filipinos who want to go back to the Philippines to retire, providing them a comparable standard of living that they have been used to during their productive years. I am thinking of a residential-business model like the Leisure World in Laguna Niquel and Seal Beach in Southern California. It is a thriving community of active professionals who are at least 55 years old, college graduates and possess a prescribed minimum net worth or assets.

I believe that if businessmen with the cooperation of the Philippine government can see this great potential, they can easily convert a certain town or an island resort into desirable retirement community, that is peaceful, clean, with adequate health care, shopping center, recreation facilities comparable to those in the United States. If they do, thousands of Filipinos in North America people like me will definitely consider going home for retirement. As the advertising billboard says, “Build it nicely and offer very competitive prices and people will come and spend.”

Corollary to a retirement community, another business is a health care facility. Assisted living businesses, I believe, can also flourish in the Philippines as Filipinos are already noted for their caring attitude throughout the world. The US spends billions of dollars in health care, especially towards the last years of life of any citizen, whether in an intermediate care facility or a 24/7 skilled nursing facility, also known as nursing home or convalescent hospital.

Beginning this decade, many Filipinos who came to the U.S. in the seventies soon will be retiring and most likely will also become residents of these health care facilities. Personally, I would rather be in the Philippines than in a nursing home, if the socio-economic and peace and order situation of the country will then improve. I dare say that there will be thousands of Filipino Americans, like me, who lead productive lives who will be thinking seriously about these inevitable things in the next 10 to 25 years. This could be a very lucrative business that can be in high demand as long as the businessmen and the Philippine government can assure the retirees relative freedom from hoodlums or kidnappers in a clean, pleasant and attractive community that is comparable if not better than a Leisure World community in California.

Extrapolate the potential of this business and what it can do for a retirement community or a health care facility, whether a intermediate care facility or a nursing home or convalescent hospital. A resident pays say $900 a month that is equivalent to over 45,000 pesos (which is a mere third or quarter of what he pays an assisted living facility in the USA!) for his board and lodging, EXCLUDING hospital and doctor’s fees. Multiply P45,000 by l00 residents will produce over P4,500,000 a month. Multiply that by l,000 or even l0,000 residents! The Philippine facility can then afford to hire more nurses and attendants to make the nurses to patients’ ratio much lower than in any U.S. facility. These businesses can employ thousands of our Filipino women so that they do not have to leave the country to become “Filipinas” (maids) in Europe, the Middle East, Singapore or Taiwan.

What does the Philippines need to have in order to engage in this lucrative business? A health care facility built comparable to, if not superior than a typical facility in the United States coupled with an effective marketing and advertising campaign in North America. This quasi government agency must be headed by a truly competent person who has the heart and understanding of this high-in-demand industry. Retired generals or plain cronies of politicians are not the right people to handle this job.

The Philippines has already an ample supply of medical and nursing graduates who have the expertise that can be tapped with higher salaries but still much lower than the salary scales in America. There are already many existing and successful businesses that can just be replicated in the Philippines with some local modifications. The doctors, nurses who render these services are oftentimes Filipinos themselves. So Filipinos can do it in America, Filipinos should be able to do it also in the Philippines. Marketed properly, retiring Filipinos and even their American friends can be lured to come and experience the world known Filipino hospitality. As a bonus, residents or patients from America can even get much more for their health care dollars in the Philippines simply because of a much lower costs of living. With his American dollars, one resident or patient can even afford to hire his own exclusive caretaker 24 hours a day!

Paging entrepreneurs and businessmen in the Philippines to start making a feasibility studies or business plan for this 21st century phenomenon when the baby boomers generation of Filipino Americans becoming senior citizens themselves! I am quite interested because in another l5-25 years, I might be one of those residents who wanted to go back and probably even die in the Philippines. That is, if our beloved Perlas ng Silangan, the Philippines that I used to know, will not have gone to a real hell run by immoral shameless, greedy and corrupt politicians! The forthcoming May 2004 election (if there is any) will serve as a litmus test for all of you in the Philippines. We, the Overseas Filipinos, can just wish you the best and of course, we will continue to pray.

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At our Progressive Times forum, I recently advanced an idea where we can convert our tourism dollars into some kind of Philippine Social Development and Entrepreneurial Fund (PSDEF). The response was very positive and many PT members are continuing our spirited discussions in the Internet. Let me also share with our STAR readers some highlights of this revolutionary idea:

In North America, bed and breakfast business is getting ve
ry popular as it is a great alternative to just staying in a typical Hilton, Sheraton or Holiday Inn during one’s vacation. I am proposing that members of our Progressive Times forum can form a PT Global Bed & Breakfast Club (PTGBBC) where any one can become the guest/ tourist or the host/tourist guide at any predetermined days of the year. Through a website created solely for this purpose, a PTGBBC member can research, compare his options and then make the necessary arrangements with another member in another city or country to be his host. Instead of paying the host directly for the market value of his Bed & Breakfast stay, the guest or tourist obliges himself to remit or deposit the fair market value of his stay into this “mutual” PSDE Fund. Said deposit, however, will be credited EQUALLY to himself (the tourist or guest) and to his host/tourist guide.

Let’s enumerate some advantages and its potential: If 100 PTGBBC members avail of this B&B Club for mutual benefits, staying an average of 7 days a year, paying $100 per day ($50.00 goes back to him as his “mutual” fund investment), the fund will generate $70,000 or about P3,500,000 that would have spent to any Hilton, Sheraton or Holiday Inn. Multiply that amount by l,000 or l0,000 tourist days and the generated amount will become staggering! The PTBBC Board of Trustees may decide to invest the generated revenues into any entrepreneurial endeavors (hopefully in the Philippines) like building more or improving existing resorts to make them more attractive for tourists to keep on coming. Other potential applications of these PSDE Funds are endless.

The advantages of staying in a B&B home are varied as the number of members participating. Primarily, it will encourage many tourists, especially those who have not traveled much, to become guests or tourists as it will be much cheaper with the added benefit of having a tourist guide (the host) who will also enjoy some financial or economic benefits. Friendship will be developed and relationships will be strengthened as the Club members become tourists and/or hosts every year. Staying with a host family who has similar or equivalent interests, education or hobbies, will not only be more economical but also better, healthier and more educational than just staying in a typical commercialized hotel.

When all these are said and done, I believe that it is us, Filipinos wherever we reside in the world ------- not the Americans, Japanese, Koreans or Europeans -----who can and must improve the Philippines. Let us all stop hoping (and begging) other nations to make us better. It is only us who can make our country progress!

Dear STAR readers, I appreciate any feedbacks or comments! E-mail me at: erdelusa@hotmail.com

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Today is Halloween (All Saints Day) and tomorrow is El Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead). People here in America celebrate these church holidays differently than they are practiced in the Philippines. On the last day of October, many people, even at work, don on costumes or wear masks pretending to be somebody else ---- from a mermaid, to Arnold Schwarzenegger, to a monk to a pirate, you name it. In the evening, many children with their own costumes go from house to house to do their “trick or treat” and the homeowners gave out countless of candies. Houses are also decorated with spooky characters with many carved pumpkins like Jack o’ Lantern with lighted candles inside.

But these American Halloween traditions are quite benign or somewhat passive in nature as opposed to the way these holidays are celebrated in the Philippines especially in many cemeteries, like the Chinese Cemeteries. Only in the Philippines, it seems, where even the dead are segregated by social classes. You can easily differentiate the tomb of a poor man versus the mausoleum of a rich man.

It’s been over two decades that I have not been in a cemetery in the Philippines during All Saints or All Souls Day. Do they still have those hired musicians or priests who are paid to sprinkle holy water or paid mourners to cry in front of those newly white-painted tombs of different sizes with fences? I am nostalgic of those memories of these holidays when we did not have classes nor work. As millions of “provincianos” living in Manila want to go home on the eve of All Saints Day, the competition to get a seat in the provincial buses is also skill where the fittest always win and get the first available seats. The prize? To be able to go home on time and partake with all the kakanins (native cakes) that are prepared for everyone for a several days.

Yes, for the Filipino expatriates like me, we often reminisce those good old times, when we are not burdened by so many things of a modern day life in the name of “progress.” Despite our 21st century gadgets of high tech, fast cars and fast foods, the good times of yesteryears seem much more satisfying if not more profound. Yes, Virginia, when you are past 40 or 50 you gradually become more nostalgic and melancholic especially in your solitude. Oh such memories… they can make you smile and even inspire you to go on living!

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Email this writer: erdelusa@hotmail.com or drbannatiran@yahoo.com
Visit his website: www.katipunan-usa.org and www.ptag.org
Join discussions at: progressivetimes-subscribe@yahoogroups.com