Economic terrorism, not just corruption

While everyone is talking about the trillion pesos stolen by corrupt government officials and politicians, no one has said anything about the unspoken ongoing attacks on different businesses and industries such as automotive, airport and steel.

- CITO BELTRAN

Many Filipino distributors of automotive brands have already lost their distributorship or local partner status because once the brand gains traction, foreign principals impose impossible sales targets and dealer expansion nationwide.

This strategy is called “squeezing blood out of a turnip” until the local partner simply lets go or gives up. From what I learned, several China-made brands as well as one Japanese brand are now under direct management and control of foreigners.

Just before the scandal over the ghost flood projects, I heard of politicians making “indecent proposals” to buy companies and businesses even if they were not for sale.

Even uglier are the orchestrated efforts of local companies paying fake or “For Hire” NGOs to destabilize successful businesses in order to block the growth of said companies, or as part of their “hostile takeover” attempts. Others hire corrupt government officials to find fault where there is none.

Some of the companies that have been subjected to such domestic attacks are San Miguel Corporation's New NAIA Infrastructure Corporation and, I suspect, even Steel Asia, the only serious corporation set on establishing steel mills and production plants all over the Philippines.

These companies are game changers in businesses that have long been stagnant due to monopolies or vested interest groups who don’t want local manufacturing to disrupt their import dependent operations.