Strengthening Our Value Chains

By -
Friends from Bohol were telling me about how difficult it has been to get good, reasonably priced fish. “You must be kidding,” I replied. “You live on an island. You have fishermen. Surely they catch enough fish.”

“Yes, they catch more than enough fish,” my friend said. “But they sell it to the high-end resorts in Mactan, which pays more. The tourists there get the best fish.”

That got me to thinking about how connected and inter-related our Provincial value chains really are. For the last three years we’ve been involved in an effort to improve road investments by directing these to “Strategic Road Links” that connect key value chain locations for agriculture, tourism, basic services, and other sectors. 50% of the road project identified this way are in the National Government Agencies’ proposed budget for 2015. The other 50% are on the Regional Development Investment Program of RDC 7.

Assuming that all of these projects would get funded and implemented on time, cheaper transport rates and shorter travel times can be expected in this Province. This can be expected to strengthen the value chains in Bohol.

But people (like tourists) and goods (like fish or vegetables) don’t stay in Bohol; they are moved to nearby Provinces and other parts of the country. If neighboring Provinces are not able to strengthen their own value chains, the overall competitiveness of the region (and the country) will remain weak. After all, the value chain within the province is just one link in the regional and national value chain. And it’s been said many times - the chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

Even now, when we compare our value chains with that of other countries, it’s easy to see that we are not as competitive as our neighbors. Consider the fact that “Thailand is the largest exporter of rice and the Philippines is the largest importer of rice in the world”.

We pride ourselves in being a tourist destination. We think that’s one of our strengths. Yet in the 2013 ranking of countries’ tourism competitiveness by the World Economic Forum, we are not anywhere near the top (the Philippines is ranked 94th). Four Asian countries in the Top 30, way ahead of us: Singapore (ranked 10th), Japan (14th), Hongkong (15th), and South Korea (25th).  

Admittedly, reforms have been put in place to make us more competitive on tourism. There are more “pocket open skies” that bring in more tourists on non-reciprocal flights. We have a more catchy tag line, too. Between and beyond those two reforms, we still need to find more measures that address the binding constraints of tourism and radically strengthen our tourism value chains.

If the comparative weakness of our competitive performance is not enough to convince anyone that we need to improve our value chains, here are two words that might: “Asian integration.”

A friend imagined the Thailand agriculture value chain as a big, solid, thick metal chain - the kind used with ships’ anchors. Ours, he said, is more like the gold chain that people wear around their necks. With Asian integration, imagine linking these two chains together. When competitive pressure is applied, guess which one could give way?


This leaves us only one choice. We have to strengthen our value chains - not only at the Provincial level, but also at the Regional and National levels. “How” is something that needs to be worked out soon. 

Comments

  1. Groomers SeafoodAugust 6, 2021 at 12:57 AM

    Very well written article. It was an awesome article to read. Complete rich content and fully informative. I totally Loved it. best fish market in san antonio

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Orientation in OODA - Discerning Opportunites to Improve the DENR Business Model for Titling Services

By -
O rientation is basically analysis and synthesis of Observations in the light of new information and previous experiences (Boyd says Orientation is also influenced by one’s genetic heritage and cultural traditions).  Each person Orients himself in a different way – consider a game of chess, where both players observe exactly the same pieces on the same squares, but see different opportunities and threats. When we looked at DENR’s old business model for issuance of titles, we observed several things. First, with regards to Customers, it was noted that prior to RA 10023 the only two ways Residents got their titles were to either buy it from the State (through a Miscellaneous Sales Agreement) or go through the judicial process. Both could be costly; the latter could take a long time. RA 10023 provided a great opportunity to speed up titling for Residents. DENR’s Value Proposition is uncontested – it is indeed the authority for public land titling and it does have the m...
Read more

Towards a Development Entrepreneurship Community of Practice

By -
Image
A fter three workshops on Development Entrepreneurship (held in Quezon City, Davao, and Cebu City), we have gathered plenty of feedback from participants, and so there's much to think about. There are practical ideas for improving the workshop, like spending more time for introductions and small-group work, samples of filled-up Tools, guide questions for writing the Theory of Change, etc. Our participants included development professionals, some funders, and members of the academe.  There's been much discussion about how funders can support the DE approach given their traditional desire for certainty, which they try to enforce with deliverables and timetables.  This reflects the dialogue that's going on with the global development community, as all actors find their footing with adaptive development strategies. Two questions from participants that resonate with me are a) will the DE approach still be useful if policy is not the problem?, and b) can the DE a...
Read more

Picking a Development Reform Agenda through Service Analysis

By -
T he Business Dictionary (http://www.businessdictionary.com) defines a Service as “A valuable action, deed, or effort performed to satisfy a need or to fulfill a demand”.  Social, economic and political institutions were established to perform actions to satisfy needs; in other words, to provide services. Failure to provide services effectively leads to undesired conditions (e.g., malnutrition, inefficient industries, low rate of land titling) which attract the attention of Development Reformists. It does not take much for a Development Reformists to know that something is broken somewhere, and needs to be fixed. It takes much effort to find out exactly what is broken, how it is broken, and how it can be fixed. The answers to these questions comprise a set of possible Development Reform agendas, which can be filtered further by the twin lenses of technical soundness and political feasibility. Is there a systematic way to generate ideas for reform? This blog suggests that s...
Read more