3rd Filipino Technopreneurship Summit
Keynote Speech by Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph G. Recto
3rd Filipino Technopreneurship Summit
SMX Convention Center, Pasay City
Magandang hapon sa inyong lahat.
Joey Concepcion complained to me that they’re having a hard time inviting lawmakers to their conferences.
I told him that if for a change he’ll sponsor a seminar on “porktrepreneurship”, then he’ll have a full house and a quorum.
I have assured the organizers that I will not speak very long, which, for those in my profession, is like asking an alcoholic to sip just a spoonful of brandy in a liquor convention where wine flows freely.
As I’ve promised, I shall be done and over with in 10 minutes.
But by the time I am finished, 33 babies would have been born in this country, many in assembly-line fashion in crowded public hospitals.
We love babies so much that we produce 4,803 of them a day, or 1.76 million a year. By year 2020, our population would have ballooned to 110.6 million, from 100 million this year.
In six years, there will be 10.6 million more of us. We’re adding the population of one Singapore every 1,000 days.
My purpose in rattling off these statistics is not to pitch for the RH Law nor to scare you in not accepting any text invitation to a date if it reads, “Come to my condo and dala ka ng foods.”
What I mentioned, to the future Taipans and the prospective MVPs who are in this hall, is the size of your market six years from now.
You’ve got a 110.6 million customer base emerging on the horizon, each of whom will need everything from unli loads to unli rice to gifts to their one and unli.
If their appetites will remain the same, each, on the average, will annually down 52 bottles of beer, eat 40 packs of instant noodles, devour 119 kilos of rice, wear out four pairs of pants, consume about 600 kilowatt hours of electricity, and – because he bathes twice a day and she thrice – use 846 cubic meters of water.
In short, there is no question that there are buyers out there, on the simple fact alone that ours is the 39th biggest economy in the world.
The real challenge, on hand, is to create a corps of entrepreneurs who will supply their needs.
But before I enumerate what you can do, let me digress a bit and expound on what the government must do, from now until 2020.
On rice, 10.6 million more mouths to feed means we have to ramp up rice production, or smuggling, by 1.26 million metric tons a year.
To achieve this, we can either improve productivity on existing ricelands, or open up newly irrigated lands for rice production at a rate of 83,968 hectares – or two and a half times the size of Camiguin – every year, or four Lunetas a day, until 2020.
On electricity, we have to commission two 100-megawatt plants every 3 months for the next six years.
On schools, we will be needing 100,458 teachers, 4 million chairs and 40 million textbooks for the projected 4 million 18 thousand additional enrollees in our public elementary and high schools.
On water, we have to source, filter, and pipe in an additional 115 billion liters of water annually.
Ang tanong : Meron na ba tayong pagkukunan ng pera para dito? Sa 100,000-plus na dagdag na teachers pa lang, P25 billion ang kailangan para sa sweldo kada taon. Sa patubig ng ating palayan, isang daang bilyong piso ang kakailanganin.
My friends, I have juxtaposed population increase and the pressure it applies on power, water, schools, rice & water to drive home the point of preparing for the future and planning ahead.
Magaling po kasi tayo sa 20/20 hindsight, pero mahina sa 2020 vision.
We are experts in the tactical, and proficient on the ad hoc. We love the quick-fix, and expect Band Aid cures to mature into permanent remedies.
Ten-year plans are unheard of in government today. What is used is a planning platform which hews to the electoral calendar, meaning projects must be finished within three years. Projects are bookended by elections.
As a result, we are stuck with 1,000-day battle plans, which coincide with the term of the incumbent. Projects carry “best before election” expiry dates so that when inaugurated, they can be milked for reelection propaganda.
Because of this constricted time frame, only short-gestation and therefore small projects are considered. Big projects that take more than three years to finish take the back seat.
The tragic result of limited vision and planning myopia is chop-chop development in which progress comes in small increments.
This because we press the reboot button every three or six years.
Mabuti na lang hindi kayo ganyan mag-isip. Sa ngayon pa lang, alam ko na ini-imagine nyo na kung ano na kayo sa 2020.
Ang dapat na papel ng pamahalaan ay suklian ang inyong talino, tapatan ang inyong sipag, at ihanda kayo. At ang paghahanda ay nagsisimula sa paaralan.
The fundamentals of technopreneurship are not learned in graduate schools but in basic education. The seeds of entrepreneurship must be planted in schools early.
It is in elementary and high schools where skills are learned, talent is nurtured. Ask any successful man, and they will point to these as where the early prototypes of their successful ventures incubate.
More than irrigation canals and physical infrastructure, the biggest challenge is for the government to build human capital.
But our graduates are only as good as the schools that produce them. So if we must churn out good graduates, then let us build good schools first.
On this, we can begin by improving science education. How?
By seeing to it that 80 percent of science teachers are science majors or have taken up masteral units on that subject.
By building more science laboratories because, at present, 36,328 public elementary schools do not have one.
By tapping the power of information technology to assist science learning.
We cannot have a market-ready employable workforce if half of our students fail in science achievement tests, if we continue to languish in the cellars of global rankings on science education, if public spending on science and technology, and R and D, is too small to measure.
This de-emphasization on science and technology is reflected on the skewed job picture.
We produced 949 lawyers in 2012 despite the glut in courtrooms, but only 10 professional mining engineers in spite of the boom in mining.
44,713 passed the nursing board in 2012, but only 46 hurdled the licensure exams for naval architects.
We induct 1,523 new city councilors – enough to fill almost nine Airbus 320s – every three years while, on the average, only 85 take their oath as licensed aeronautical engineers during the same period.
We have 337,620 elected barangay officials and just 92,000 small enterprise owners.
Bakit konti lang ang scientists and engineers, pero maraming gustong mag-drive nang “8” na plaka? Kasi mapurol ang pundasyon sa science.
Kahit sa colleges, one-tenth lang ang naka-enroll sa engineering and technology courses.
Ang resulta? Jobs mismatch. As one social observer has put it, “we have become a republic of tambays with college rings.”
As of last October, there were 556,000 jobless college graduates, six times the size of our Army. Hence, the fitting term : army of the unemployed.
Pero hindi naman dapat manatili na ang FB status mo ay forever “unemployed.” If you can’t land a job, then create your own. If you can’t be employed, then be an entrepreneur.
But creating jobs is not your job alone. It is also the job of those whom you have chosen from applicants in triennial national job fairs, otherwise called as elections.
In the Senate, Senator Bam Aquino and I are crafting a Go Negosyo Act that will reduce taxes, cut red tape, trim bureaucratic requirements, provide training, offer financing for start-ups.
But these are not ready-mix, just-add-water formula which will create instant jobs or businesses in a jiffy.
However extensive the provisions of the Go Negosyo Bill may be, these are only supporting equities to what you posses. To be honest, it will not be a catalogue of dole outs, but more of listing of helping hands.
It will show you where to get incentives and instruction. Though not of the monetary kind, the latter is important because the important investment to be made in an enterprise is not on the capital, but on the training of the entrepreneur.
And you can find that good training and assistance in Go Negosyo. As a politician, I can only offer words. The likes of Joey Concepcion are the ones who can show you the way and offer wisdom.
Whatever your plans are, pursue it with vigor, because there is no substitute for hard work; with virtue, because it pays to be honest; and with vision, because no business thrives without foresight.
Those are three Vs. In my case, I have a fourth V, and that is Governor Vi. My point is that it is easier to chase your dreams if you have the love of your life at your side to inspire you.
Thank you and good afternoon.
