Meeting up close with the country’s businessmen will always be productive for any leader of a nation. Such an assembly also clears up the business community’s seemingly negative perceptions about President Rodrigo Duterte, whose foul mouth has overshadowed his sincerity to govern the Philippines.
The dinner hosted by Mr. Duterte for the country’s top businessmen in Malacañang Tuesday night clearly is a step forward in getting the cooperation of business leaders in furthering the economic and social agenda of the government. Inadequate infrastructure, widespread poverty, peace and order problems and unemployment are among the critical issues that the government must address.
Every government desires to solve these decades-old problems and it needs the commitment and the resolve of the private sector in providing solutions to the economic malaise.
Tuesday’s dialogue highlighted Mr. Duterte’s concern to develop the poorest areas in the Philippines, especially in Mindanao, his home before he was elected to the highest post in the land. Mr. Duterte has often complained of Imperial Manila and the subsequent neglect of Mindanao. He is right and the country’s top businessmen apparently heard him.
The Metro Pacific Group, in response, committed to pour investments in Mindanao as a part of its commitment to help the Duterte administration. PLDT Group head Manuel Pangilinan bared his conglomerate’s plan to roll out telecommunications services and build hospitals in Mindanao, as well as establish a coconut oil mill in Sulu. San Miguel Corp. president Ramon Ang earlier disclosed plans to invest in a cement plant in Davao City and build more power stations in Mindanao.
Forging a closer relationship with businessmen, and not alienating them, will produce positive results and ease the government’s job.
Mr. Duterte, meanwhile, should listen to the concerns of businessmen. The ease of doing business in the Philippines, for one, has still room for improvement to make the country more investor-friendly and competitive with Asian neighbors. Lines of communications with businessmen and foreign investors should be open if the government wants to meet its economic objectives.