Ease of doing business - legalities are obstacles to business progress

Every generation needs a revolution - an entrepreneurial revolution

Much has been said about ease of doing business in the Philippines and our country ranks low in this department.   For example, the growth area of the country, renewable energy, the complaint still is the number of signatures needed to start a project.    And directives from the very top is to facilitate govt 

approvals.  

It is more than that.  The slow judiciary or byzantine decisions of the court has not made things easier for businesses.   In our case,  our greatest challenge is how to get past a case involving a fake title which the court upheld to be true and now we cant get titles (which are required in most govt agencies)  because the title holders are embroiled again in ownership claims:     One entity claims it has right over the property the title being in its name; the original owner said there was a deed of exchange for which it has not received anything for which the latter has filed an adverse claim.

Now third party developers cant get a handle on whom to settle with.

And the delays persist.   No investment, No development  No progress.  

JV again

Every generation needs a revolution - an entrepreneurial revolution

A business acquaintance called me yesterday from a tourist island province.   She informed me that the botched land purchase we had (due to competition) is not proceeding smoothly.  Apparently the same problem we had was encountered by the mogul buyer, a big name in the industry

We dont mind this though because we a have jv in a tourism city in the north and it could be jv.

So the business partner informed me that to avoid the competition in the island province, we would shift to an AB market say 3 to 4 hectare and probably jv.  

A jv would be preferable because you save the cash flow for land acquisition and you can proceed right away with development and construction.    The landowner is assured of continuous source of income and becomes part of price increases

We hope we can be successful in both

USA - no longer the land of milk and honey, the and of the free

Every generation needs a revolution - an entrepreneurial revolution

USA when I was younger was reputed to be the land of milk and honey and everybody wants to be go to USA   It was everybody's dream.   People sold their belongings, waited for days at US embassy to get their B1 B2 visa to be TNTs later.    The Philippines best and brightest struggled to be there.  I did not.   It offered the  kind of life the conveniences and luxuries not found in the Philippines.

But all of that changed after I watched two videos:   that of homelessness and urban decay.  Perhaps brought about by Covid 19 and inflation.   Despite too many billionaires in USA it cant enter my mind that there are poor people there.  Where there is too much basketball and movies and basketball stars earn millions.   

At least if it is bad in our country, at least we know to be bad from the  start   At least we can build it up.  But decaying from prosperity, it looks like hard to accept  

US poverty rate. There are more young below poverty line to as high as 20+%

Now do we envy USA?  Is it is still our model  Let strive to have our own   A Filipino model of progress and sustainability.  

Homeless in the USA:

Poverty in USA