Why Be an EntrePinoy - 2

Do you like corned beef? O may sakit lang ba ang tinatanong?

Thirty or so years ago, all the karne norte we ate came from the United States, Brazil, or Argentina. Remember how we badgered our “stateside relatives” to bring us Libby’s, Hormels, and Hereford, seeing how it used to cost an arm or a leg to buy it here

Not anymore.

Today, there are Honey, Campo Carne, Purefoods, Argentina, Swifts, and CDO corned beef – all made in the Philippines and many of them better-tasting than the imported brands.

We also used to import all of our food processing equipment, but today, Benjamin Almeda and his sons’ factory in Gagalangin, Tondo, Manila, are fabricating some of these machines at half the price of the German makes. As we import less, we save more. Our dollars stay inside the country rather than paid to foreign businessman. Ang resulta – a better balance of payments. Mas konting utang sa World Bank.

This is another reason why entrepreneurs are dubbed the engine of the economy. Would you want to count yourself among the select people who will push the Philippines on its way to being a proud and self-reliant country, sa wakas. At long last.

I think by now you understand why our beloved Pinas needs many people who will set up their own businesses. But there is one more important reason.

Entrepreneurs who set up businesses in small towns and cities help develop these areas and thus stop the rural people from leaving their homes to migrate to the big cities.

If you come from the provinces, can you count how many of your kababayan and kababaryo migrated to Metro Manila, Metro Cebu or Metro Davao? And while you’re counting, can you also include those who left Pinas for contract employment in Hong Kong, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Italy, etc?

Why did they leave? If there were enough entrepreneurs who were able to set up enough factories and other business establishments in your town and employed many of your kababayan, don’t you think some of the migrants could have stayed instead of left?

Do you know what else I am trying to suggest by asking you these kulit questions? I am trying to tell you not to look too far away from home when looking for a site for your future business, if you have a mind on one. Set up your store or your factory right where you live or were born. Wouldn’t it be exciting to help build up a new growth area or “boom” town? Your very own bayan!

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About the Author Annamanila is Myrna Rodriguez-Co, a professional writer and editor who has over 50 books and periodicals on entrepreneurship and small enterprise management to her name. The latest of these are the four-volume Dreamers, Doers, Risk-takers entrepreneurial case story series of the UP Institute for Small-Scale Industries, a two-volume series on technology-based entrepreneurs of the Department of Science and Technology, and a two-volume series on agrarian reform programs and beneficiaries of the Department of Agrarian Reform. She edited the Small Business Entreprenews magazine which won an Anvil Award as best external publication many years ago. She had a four-year consultancy stint with the Development Bank of the Philippines, handling communication and promotion for its ISSEP lending project. Recently retired from the ISSI, she was retained by the office as publication and publicity consultant even as she contributes regularly to the Philippine Daily Inquirer small business features section and occasionally to the Sunday Inquirer Magazine. She is mom to six grown-up children and grandma to a toddler. She maintains a personal blogsite at http://ode2old.blogspot.com whose theme-philosophy -- "the best is yet to be" -- she tries to keep faith with with blow-hot-blow-cold fervor. Read more from this author

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