Former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile yesterday underscored the need to forego of laws that dissuade foreigners from making investments in order to create millions of jobs for Filipinos and spur the country’s economic growth.
“We must eliminate laws that serve as roadblocks or impede foreign investments,” said Enrile, who is staging a comeback in the Senate in this year’s midterm elections.
“We must make the country friendly to foreign investments,” he added.
Enrile said the government and the Filipino people must make foreign investors feel that they are welcome to do business in the Philippines.
“We must inculcate this culture to our people,” he said, adding that job creation is a function of investments.
Unless somebody risks capital to establish a business, an industry, or layout an infrastructure, he warned that no jobs would be created.
“Hence, for us to provide jobs for our people, we must encourage domestic investments, both from the private and government sectors,” he added.
According to the World Bank, the Philippines was ranked 113th among 190 economies in terms of ease of doing business in 2017, down from 99th in 2016.
Enrile said new jobs created as a result of fresh investments would also help address the country’s perennial problem on both unemployment and underemployment, which currently stand at 2.36 million and 9.8 million Filipinos, respectively.