by Aurelio Peña
UNTIL NOW, I still can’t figure out why this big federation of nationwide Philippine exporters isn’t too keen in promoting exports with regular trade publications that reache the hands of medium to small exporters who don’t own laptops or even bother to get into an internet café to look for foreign buyers.
Several months ago, that’s the direct impression we got from the office of PhilExport president Sergio Ortiz whose office assistants turned down our suggestion for a “trade publication” that provides export opportunities to small exporters for free.
The problem with government agencies and organizations like PhilExport is that they assume, rightly or wrongly, that ALL small exporters who badly need help in finding foreign buyers for their products, are “internet-savvy” who own laptops and can easily get into websites that provide this service.
But the reality is — most can’t even operate a computer, much less figure out how to use the internet. That’s why we suggested a regular monthly publication that reaches the tops of their office tables by MAIL for free.
No hassles, whatsoever. All they have to do is open the mail and find a tabloid newspaper designed only for small exporters to help them in production, manufacturing, packaging and finding foreign buyers for their products.
It sounds stupid, but we had this dream that maybe, just maybe, PhilExport could be (and should be!) the publisher of that little experimental tabloid we put out called “The Trading Post” a few years ago. But it was turned down by the office of Ortiz.
And then came this opportunity last year from the Export Development Council (EDC) for each region, thru the Department of Trade and Industry, to come out with projects that can help boost the exports of the region.
Naturally, since we believe so much in this project (because we know it works from our previous experiences), we suggested to DTI that maybe a monthly exporters’s publication could be a good idea. Our DTI friends agreed — all top officials — and asked us to come up with a formal proposal to EDC. But it can’t be submitted directly, they need a “proponent” to submit the proposal to EDC.
So, the “proponent” had to be the Davao chapter of PhilExport headed by our good friend Jun Borja as chairman and another good friend Amy Pamintuan as president. Unfortunately, we had no idea how the “dynamics” within an organization works, but I was forewarned that it was there, whether we like it or not.
It’s such a pity because the EDC just announced that the “export promotion” project submitted by PhilExport Davao chapter (about P3 million) had already been APPROVED by the government. Funny thing is, my good friend VP Domeng Ang told me he doesn’t know anything about it.
We could be wrong, of course, but we have this image of the chairman and president not talking to each other. This little “gridlock” could cause any group or organization to freeze in their tracks, no longer moving forward to plan and implement projects, causing it to die a natural death if no one bothers to “unlock” the gridlock.
“Dynamics” are also found in all government agencies, offices, NGO’s, churches, the military, rebel groups, schools, and surprisingly, MEDIA too ! This you’ll find in newspaper offices among editors, publishers, reporters, etc. No one is exempted from this thing called “dynamics”.
Fact is, when this “dynamics” becomes dynamite-hot, it explodes and destroys the organization. Look what’s happening to the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines (NUJP) and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) — their fight is spilling into Facebook, in Twitter, in Blogs for everyone to see.
(Women journalists of these two groups are still fighting tooth and nail and pulling at each other’s hair since last week because of a very stupid reason: the exclusive right to visit the Maguindanao Massacre site.)
Everyone’s still hoping they’ll break down this wall called “dynamics” and things will eventually “normalize” at PhilExport Davao chapter so it can function as it should — an organization that will help small exporters here stand on their own feet…
(Comments? Send your email to : tradingpost_davao@yahoo.com )
