KEYNOTE SPEECH OF SECRETARY RAMON M. LOPEZ
ASEAN-INDIA BUSINESS SUMMIT GALA AND AWARDS NIGHT
19 October 2019, Makati Shangrila, Makati City
As delivered
Ladies and gentlemen, good evening!
Allow me first to Thank the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce Inc. (FICCI) for organizing tonight’s event in honour of His Excellency, Indian President Ram Nath Kovind.
To your Excellency, Indian President Kovind, let me greet you a warm welcome again to our country.
We hope you are finding your visit so far to be enjoyable and productive.
President Kovind’s presence in today’s gathering is a great reflection of his full support to strengthening bilateral trade and investment relations between our two nations.
Our beloved President Rodrigo Duterte’s trip to India last 24 January 2018 showed that India is an important trading partner of the Philippines.
Aside from holding a bilateral meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, our President gathered over US$1B in investment pledges and generated 9 business agreements during that visit.
As of 2018, India was our 15th top trading partner, our 17th top export market, and our 14th top import supplier with bilateral merchandise trade at US$2.37B. Our exports to India went up by around 4% last year.
Meanwhile, our imports from India also increased by 6.7% and this is just a beginning. We see this a continuing increase at the years to come.
Presently, Indian investments in the Philippines are in the following sectors and industries: electricity, gas steam and air-conditioning supply; pharmaceuticals manufacturing; administrative and support service activities; real estate activities; financial and insurance activities; agriculture, forestry and fishing; manufacturing; wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles;
We all know of Indian companies strong presence in the IT BPM and ICT sectors.
There are many more Investment opportunities that Indian companies may consider including automotive parts and components; public-private partnership in infrastructure development just like the project initiated by the GMR; pharmaceuticals; education services; and tourism/ hotel investments.
Like India, the Philippines is the one of the fastest growing economy in Asia and ASEAN with a GDP growth of 5.5% as of the 2nd quarter of this year.
Our GDP growth indicates a long-run growth on an upward trajectory, having had positive growth for 82 consecutive quarters. It was also above 6% for the past 7 years since 2012. With our GDP showing a narrowing range of growth rates indicative of more stability and upward trajectory, ratings agencies have upgraded our country’s rating to BBB+, a notch below the A rating.
Our headline inflation exhibited a slower pace at 0.9% in September 2019, the lowest inflation since June 2016. Our country’s unemployment rate averaged 5.4% for July 2019, the lowest in nearly 40 years. Our underemployment rate was also at 13.9% when this rate used to be over 20% and this indicates the vast improvement in terms of job quality in the country.
With the Philippines enjoying robust economic growth, we need to create more opportunities with India and its fast-growing economy to expand economic engagements that is based on synergies and complementarities.
For example, our countries have the shared distinction of being the top frontline service providers in the BPO sector globally. To ensure close partnership among IT and BPO companies, we need to continue our exchange of best practices with a view to upgrading primary skills.
As such, the Philippine government considers the private sector as our necessary partners in upgrading our economic engagement. We need to foster more frequent exchanges between our businessmen to intensify two-way trade.
To facilitate direct investments between our two countries, the Department of Trade and Industry’s Board of Investments (DTI-BOI) and Invest India signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) last January 2019.
Separately, Indian bus manufacturer Hinduja Group has already expressed interest to manufacture buses in the Philippines to support our public utility vehicle modernization program. Indian transport giants Tata and Mahindra likewise have investments in the country.
In the fields of IT and BPO, we have Indian companies operating in the Philippines as their strategic second location to service global markets while employing many Filipinos. And to this we thank our Indian friends.
Meanwhile, India’s GMR Group has engaged in a public-private partnership endeavours as part of the GMR-Megawide Cebu Airport Corporation (GMCAC). Through this joint venture, they opened the new Terminal T2 at Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA) last 1 July 2018. This is a US$600M project and this has signalled that they would like to see the Philippines become their company’s hub in Southeast Asia in terms of infrastructure projects.
There are other areas of opportunities in broadening trade and investment engagements between our two countries. Last August, the DTI-Exports Management Bureau (DTI-EMB) conducted an Outbound Business Matching Mission (OBMM) to Mumbai, India. Filipino companies that participated in the mission were into fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) like packaged foods and snacks, beverages, personal care products, and pharmaceuticals. These were all identified to have great potential in the Indian market.
Meanwhile, the number of Indian students in the Philippines is steadily growing as they pursue medical and civil aviation courses. To help them choose where to study, the Indian Embassy has a list of accredited Philippine medical institutions on their website.
All these points of interest I’ve mentioned indicate that trade and investment between our two countries have only an upward projection.
That’s not even counting the fact that both our nations are actively working towards the conclusion of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) by the year’s end.
While underlining economic cooperation and regional integration, RCEP also complements our thrust to boost our bilateral economic engagement and national economic roadmaps. We see India as a key partner here in our quest for integration in the global value chain.
All these truly made the visit of President Kovind very timely and meaningful to all of us.
To close, we are thankful for the broadening trade and investment relationship between the Philippines and India as there is much room for improvement and the opportunities are numerous.
More importantly, these engagements symbolize the growing friendship between our two nations. We hope that this will continue in the days to come as we work towards creating greater inclusive growth and shared prosperity for all our people and this is also the vision of our President Rodrigo Roa Duterte.
Again, to President Kovind, and the Indian delegation, we hope you continue to enjoy your stay in the Philippines.
Thank you and mabuhay po tayong lahat.