Speech
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
To the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry

Delivered at the Westin Philippine Plaza Hotel, March 20, 1994]

Productive at forty

YOUR TRACK RECORD since 1954, to say the least, shows that you have had a most productive 40 years.

I dare say no social-civic organization can match your efforts to improve our education infrastructure.

You have donated almost 1,500 schoolbuildings from Aparri to Jolo under your project “Operation: Barrio Schools,” thus helping ease our chronic shortage of classrooms and making possible for thousands of poor Filipino children to enjoy basic education.

In times of typhoons, earthquakes, floods and fires, you have been quick to help and comfort calamity victims.

To our countrymen living in depressed areas, your project “Operation: Mobile Clinic” has provided free medical and dental aid.

Helping improve police mobility

Chinese-Filipino volunteer fire brigades organized through your encouragement are often among the first to respond to fire alarms—helping save lives and property.

I must also acknowledge your contributions to help improve peace and order, especially in Metro Manila.

Your donations of 40 brand-new, fully equipped police patrol cars—as well as the hundreds of motorcycles you have turned over to police agencies—have improved the mobility of our law-enforcement agencies.

When prices of basic goods tend to rise unreasonably during abnormal times, your Federation uses its influence to persuade industrialists and businessmen to keep their profit margins at a level in keeping with their civic responsibility.

I recall a time you donated 20 Fiera vans to the Metro Manila government—to be used as mobile stores selling prime commodities at factory prices.

To promote tourism, you joined hands with national agencies and the city of Manila to renew Manila’s “Chinatown” to make it a landmark for visitors and travelers.

And, of course, we cannot forget the “Miss Chinatown Philippines” whom you send abroad as ambassadors of goodwill to promote Philippine tourism.

Your role in developing the economy

Your most important contribution, however, has been to help develop our economy and generate jobs. Our Chinese-Filipinos make up only one percent of our population. But Chinese-Filipino companies generate a full third of the sales of all domestically owned firms.

Your members are engaged in business in almost all aspects of our commercial life. Your economic power and influence you have used responsibly—to your credit and to the entire nation’s benefit.

Despite our economic difficulties these past several years, your members have stuck it out in the Philippines—instead of relocating to other countries.

You have also been sending trade and goodwill missions abroad to expand and improve trading relations with your counterparts in other countries and to invite foreign investor to the Philippines.

I understand that among our guests today are foreign delegates to the Tenth Asian Amity Conference, which your Federation is hosting.

This is neither the first nor the last of such international gatherings under your sponsorship. These conferences have given our foreign business visitors a firsthand view of the investment opportunities our country offers.

A worldwide network of entrepreneurship

The network of entrepreneurship that the Overseas Chinese have woven throughout East Asia, the Pacific—and in fact the world—makes them an economic power in themselves.

A Hong Kong academic recently estimated that although the 44 million hua ch’iao make up only 4 percent of China’s population, their “national income” is two-thirds as big as that of the Chinese mainland.

Your Federation is our embassy to this formidable economic power that the Overseas Chinese community represents. We value the business contacts with ethnic Chinese businessmen that you maintain all over Asia and the world. These bonds of friendship—and mutual benefit—should prove equally beneficial to our economy as a whole.

Let me now turn to my Government’s effort at reform, for which I seek your wholehearted help and support.

At this time, my Government, as you know, is engaged in leveling the playing field of business competition.

This campaign seeks to abolish business advantage gained through political influence. We want businessmen to be able to run their businesses without having to kowtow to influential politicians, bureaucrats and criminal syndicates.

As part of this campaign, we are dismantling monopolies and cartels injurious to the public interest. Our initial effort—to open up the telecommunications industry to competition—has already borne fruit in more telephones and better service. We are liberalizing the banking system and decartelizing the cement industry, various sectors and agribusiness and interisland shipping.

And we are determined to collect the right taxes from every taxpayer. Our tax campaign is an important reform effort. There will be neither fear nor favor in its implementation.

The full force of the law shall be applied equally and without discrimination—to all tax evaders—without targeting any specific individual, corporation or community in our plural society.

All prosecutions shall be open—with the accused entitled to every legal defense.

To our foreign visitors who came to attend this conference, and to those others who came to share in your anniversary celebrations, let me extend our warm welcome and our hospitality.

An investor-friendly country

I understand your itinerary includes a visit to the Subic Bay Free Port Zone. I hope this visit will give you an inkling of the business opportunities our country offers at this time. Those opportunities would not have been possible without the political stability we are finally enjoying. And political stability is the happy result of our peace initiatives, greater cooperation among all branches of Government, and our all-out war on crime.

The fight against syndicated crime—particularly kidnapping—is led by my Vice President and an elite group of law enforcers in the Presidential Anti-Crime Commission.

As you can see, we have put our power crises behind us. We are now expanding our countrywide network of roads, bridges, piers, airports. Everywhere you locate in our country, you will find skilled and adaptable workers.

And you will find our laws—on repatriating profits, holding land and running businesses in general—to be investor-friendly.

Apart from enjoying substantial privileges, foreign investments are protected by constitutional mandate from any form of confiscation. Our history will bear out that we have never nationalized a foreign business concern.

Let me assure you that the Ramos Government will continue to promote the free and healthy growth of lawful foreign business enterprise in this country.

We are happy to have you with us, to share in the fortieth anniversary of your organization, the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

This Federation, as an ethnic institution, has done much to help assimilate our ethnic Chinese into the mainstream of Philippine society. I believe that the Federation has been highly successful in this regard.

The Federation has advocated the legalization of aliens who wish to live and work here for the long term. We are optimistic that the Alien Legalization Bill and other related measures will be approved with dispatch—so that we can harness the productive potentials of every citizen in our plural society.

Culture and civic responsibility

For much longer than the four decades of this Federation’s existence, Chinese-Filipinos have helped build this country—with their blood, their toil, their resources and their enterprise.

Ours has been a historical partnership founded on the strongest values of Asia’s great civilizations.

And now we must reaffirm that partnership and move forward to meet the challenges of a new century.

Let us continue to work together to turn this country into a showcase of progress, dynamism and harmony—the very same virtues that have distinguished your Federation.

I am hopeful of our young generation of Chinese-Filipinos—a generation of largely well-educated, certainly more politically aware than its elders, and more self-confident about its place in our country’s cultural mainstream.

You have freely chosen this country for your own. Love it and care for it.

I see no contradiction between your pride in your Chinese culture and your civic responsibility—as citizens—to the Philippine state.

Your moral obligation is to cleanse your community of that small minority who are destroying its reputation by their antisocial acts.

In business, look for long-term gains and not just for short-term profits. Plant, create, establish—not just for today but for tomorrow—and the day after.