Help for SMEs, biz groups

A GERMAN ministry has partnered with the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI) in a project that aims to further strengthen the business chambers and the small and medium enterprise sector in the Visayas and Northern Mindanao.

The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) funds the Working for Enhancement of the Chamber and Association Network in the Visayas and Caraga (We Can Visayas & Caraga) project through the Foundation for Economic Development and Vocational Training (SEQUA).

SEQUA has appointed the Federation of Catholic Entrepreneurs, whose project implementation arm is the AFOS Foundation for Entrepreneurial Development Cooperation, to work in partnership with CCCI in the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the project.

Technical aid

“This project provides technical assistance, like training and consultancy, to the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) through partnerships with the business chambers they belong to,” said SEQUA project manager Simone Lehmann in a press conference yesterday.

AFOS resident representative Dr. Stephan Kunz said some of the training programs they will implement under the We Can Visayas and Caraga project are strategic planning, leadership and management training, and skills training in different fields, including handicraft, fashion accessories, food processing, aquaculture and tourism.

“The overall goal is to improve the business environment for SME development while the participating chambers and associations are in the position to maintain an improved service offer for the SMEs,” We Can steering committee chairman Jose Ng said.

The project will be implemented within three years, from August 2009 to July 2012, with possible extension of another three years if needed.

Since it started, AFOS and CCCI have already undertaken field assessments and data gathering, and consultative and planning workshops with participating chambers.

Coverage

Initially, the project will cover the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Iloilo and Metro Bacolod Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Western Visayas; Bohol Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Negros Oriental Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Central Visayas; Samar Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Ormoc Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Eastern Visayas; and Bislig Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Butuan City Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Caraga.

Kunz said they will eventually extend their technical assistance to other regions even before the possible extension of the project after 2012.

“There is a need for (such) support in other regions whose economic climate is different from each other,” he said.

Complementary

He added that We Can will complement existing projects and private sector development and promotion programs of German development agencies like the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and the German Development Service (DED) in the country.

Other members of the We Can project management are incoming area vice president for the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry-Visayas Francis Monera and CCCI executive director Teresa Pono.

Help for SMEs, biz groups

A GERMAN ministry has partnered with the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI) in a project that aims to further strengthen the business chambers and the small and medium enterprise sector in the Visayas and Northern Mindanao.

The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) funds the Working for Enhancement of the Chamber and Association Network in the Visayas and Caraga (We Can Visayas & Caraga) project through the Foundation for Economic Development and Vocational Training (SEQUA).

SEQUA has appointed the Federation of Catholic Entrepreneurs, whose project implementation arm is the AFOS Foundation for Entrepreneurial Development Cooperation, to work in partnership with CCCI in the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the project.

Technical aid

“This project provides technical assistance, like training and consultancy, to the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) through partnerships with the business chambers they belong to,” said SEQUA project manager Simone Lehmann in a press conference yesterday.

AFOS resident representative Dr. Stephan Kunz said some of the training programs they will implement under the We Can Visayas and Caraga project are strategic planning, leadership and management training, and skills training in different fields, including handicraft, fashion accessories, food processing, aquaculture and tourism.

“The overall goal is to improve the business environment for SME development while the participating chambers and associations are in the position to maintain an improved service offer for the SMEs,” We Can steering committee chairman Jose Ng said.

The project will be implemented within three years, from August 2009 to July 2012, with possible extension of another three years if needed.

Since it started, AFOS and CCCI have already undertaken field assessments and data gathering, and consultative and planning workshops with participating chambers.

Coverage

Initially, the project will cover the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Iloilo and Metro Bacolod Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Western Visayas; Bohol Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Negros Oriental Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Central Visayas; Samar Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Ormoc Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Eastern Visayas; and Bislig Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Butuan City Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Caraga.

Kunz said they will eventually extend their technical assistance to other regions even before the possible extension of the project after 2012.

“There is a need for (such) support in other regions whose economic climate is different from each other,” he said.

Complementary

He added that We Can will complement existing projects and private sector development and promotion programs of German development agencies like the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and the German Development Service (DED) in the country.

Other members of the We Can project management are incoming area vice president for the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry-Visayas Francis Monera and CCCI executive director Teresa Pono.

Coops to put up gas stations chain

TO make the cooperative industry grow in the country and further become a model of strong cooperative movement in Asia, Philippine cooperatives are considering putting up a chain of gasoline stations and a shopping mall.

National Cooperative Development Council (NCDC) chairman Arthur Aller made this recent announcement, saying that these projects will be part of a cooperative “blueprint” that will showcase the industry’s best practices.

This blueprint will be drafted within the next two years in time for the next Asian Cooperative Teamshop.

Aller explained that putting up a chain of gasoline stations will help cooperatives cope with the unstable fuel prices that have affected their businesses.

Cooperatives will be convening transport groups and pooling out resources to put up this project, he said.

These stations are initially planned to be located in places where local cooperative councils exist, like the Provincial Cooperative Development Council in Oriental Negros.

Blueprint

“Once the blueprint is done, we will replicate the (gasoline station) in other areas,” said Aller.

Cooperatives are also looking into the establishment of a federated ownership and management of a shopping mall that would eventually compete with big shopping malls in the country like SM.

Aller said this planned mall is designed to establish a pool of consumer groups that will patronize and support cooperative-owned businesses.

“This is an ambitious plan, but if we will start small with a group of people who, despite their limited funds, will pool resources to make this plan possible, we could grow big enough to compete with other malls. We just have to start with a small model,” he said.

The plan for a shopping mall was spurred by the cooperatives’ same objective, which is to provide business opportunities to their members.

NCDC serves as a consultative body for cooperatives that continue to grow in number and in membership.

The Cooperative Development Authority (CDA) estimated 7,000 cooperatives nationwide now applying for the new registration mandated under the Philippine Cooperative Code of 2008.

These cooperatives collectively register close to P200 billion in assets and close to seven million members.

The CDA reported that the standards and best practices of cooperatives in the Philippines are way ahead of those of other Asian counties and are being used as benchmarks by neighboring nations like Thailand and Indonesia.

Portal to push tourism

TO GET more Cebu companies to advertise their businesses on the Internet, an online classified service portal will intensify its efforts to promote Cebu as a major tourist destination.

Starting this month, 88DB.com will showcase an improved online page about Cebu, featuring the 4,000 advertisers coming from the province.

These businesses that advertised through 88DB.com’s free media portal are composed of large companies, small and medium enterprises, and home-based businesses.

These include hotels, resorts, business services firms, wedding industry players, restaurants, real estate companies, and schools, among others.

Growing

“We want to grow the present number of Cebu advertisers we have to 20,000 toward the end of 2010. We believe Cebu is growing, so we have to be here,” 88DB.com general manager Racquel Cagurangan told Sun.Star Cebu.

“We aim to enlist more tourism-related establishments, entrepreneurs and freelancers in the site and help them advertise their products and services both to the local and foreign tourists,” she added.

88DB.com, launched in the Philippines last August 2006, has more than 200,000 members, over two million page views monthly, and more than 26,000 site visits daily, she said.

According to its website, 88DB is the newest service developed by JobsDB.com, a jobsite in Asia Pacific.

“88DB extends JobsDB’s service to a new level by creating a classified site for organizations, companies, individuals, clubs, societies and associations to promote and hire services of various kinds,” the website said.

Bloggers

To signal its commitment to promote Cebu as one of the country’s premier hubs, 88DB.com inked last week a partnership with the Cebu Bloggers Society (CBS), a non-profit network of more than 60 bloggers.

CBS also sealed a partnership with JobsDB Philippines Inc., the Philippine arm of the career portal in Asia with offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Australia, among others.

“The Cebu workforce has consistently attracted the attention of employers because of their work ethic, resourcefulness and passion for excellence. JobsDB’s page on Cebu that touched on its industries and human resources was created a year ago to support Cebu’s growth. Our new partnership with CBS, which will increase awareness of job opportunities for Cebuanos, builds on that strategy,” said JobsDB Philippines marketing manager Jane Christine Soco.

Career page

Through the partnership, JobsDB will create a career page for the CBS website, linking it to more than 6,000 jobs that appear on the JobsDB Home Page every day. CBS members will be the first to spot new job openings as soon as they are uploaded; they will discuss them in their posts and spread the word to interested parties.

Soco said they expect more job openings next year, as companies are now starting to recover from the effects of the global financial crisis.

Going up

In the middle of this year, JobsDB Philippines noted a decline in the number of jobs posted. But the numbers have been going up again in the last quarter of this year.

The number of resumes submitted has also increased, said Soco.

JobsDB is now planning to reach out to more students and job seekers, and to provide a facelift to its website. It also intends to provide value-added services like announcements of job opening through mobile phones.

Osmeña: Intricate subdivision and development concept

Antonio V. Osmeña
Estatements

IN PRACTICE, the terms “subdividing” and “developing” are used interchangeably. Professionally, however, the application of these terms differs significantly.

There are owners, operators and speculators, for instance, who are interested only in the less intricate business functions of acquiring tracts of land at wholesale and selling them, subdivided, at retail. In the case of Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña’s pet project, the South Road Properties, the reclaimed area covering a total of more or less 300 hectares of raw land is now being subdivided and offered retail to those interested in developing them.

Filinvest and, more recently, SM, are interested in going far beyond this initial stage of urbanization. They seek to assume business functions that involve the creation of an entire development and the building of “living” areas that will integrate effectively with the surrounding civic and cultural environment, which is the business concept of Mayor Tom.

Literally interpreted, subdividing merely means the breaking up of one or more large tracts of land into smaller sites or plots.

Where subdividing is the owner’s intent, as in the SRP, he need not incur any additional expenses, other than those incidental to reclaiming the foreshore area and survey of the land.

He or she will also have to place markers or stakes at intended plot boundaries and submit a surveyor’s “plat” (or survey plan) of the proposed subdivision for city officials’s approval.

On the other hand, whenever land improvements are carried out in accordance with subdivision plans, and expenditures are made to provide essential site facilities, the field actions are appropriately classified as “land development.” Mayor Osmeña does not favor undertaking this in the SRP.

The SRP was planned and approved as a site for light manufacturing industries. Then, because of China’s cheap labor force, the SRP lost its economic opportunities in light manufacturing.

What the critics are now concerned about is whether the SRP has become a hodgepodge road network. It might be worthwhile for Mayor Osmeña to submit to the public a coordinated road network system, so that Filinvest and SM can synchronize their plans with the master plan for the 300-hectare property.

This road master plan is necessary for all those who wish to invest in either development or joint venture arrangement; they should subscribe to the master plan so that the different developers’s road systems interconnect.

To illustrate: The City of Cebu has consistently failed to implement a comprehensive road network system, thus developed subdivisions have no access to other adjacent properties. Mayor Serging Osmeña Jr. had the planning board prepare a comprehensive road network system, but unfortunately, it has never been properly implemented.

A good look at the map of the City of Cebu will show that different residential subdivision developments do not follow a pattern of achieving a comprehensive road network interconnection.

Cebu’s national roads suffer constant traffic snarls, and the only solution to decongest this is for Metro Cebu’s town and city planning agencies to interconnect municipal and city roads.

Most city-owned roads are narrow, as these were planned earlier for horse-drawn vehicles.

Who, then, among the political candidates have the political will to solve the obsolescent city-owned roads? Thousands of automobiles can no longer be accommodated in the national roads, and secondary city or municipal roads are a must. Hopefully, the SRP will have wide-enough roads for the ever-increasing number of automobiles.

This early, the Cebu Business Park is encountering traffic snarls, because of its road network design.

The introduction of the automobile and the lowering of the cost per vehicle, through mass production, has provided unlimited mobility and affordability, that have caused the urban sprawl.

Well-designed roads and highways need to be accomplished by the government and private land developers. Cebu’s limited coastal plain has made land developers and property owners stingy in providing the public with a generous area for vehicular use.

Will these SRP-awarded developers and buyers follow a certain pattern of road width that will conform to future vehicular traffic needs? Another problem is the greed of land developers who want to maximize profits by sacrificing vehicular amenities.