PIDS experts push economic reforms

Experts from a government think tank pushed for more economic reforms to enable the Philippines to benefit from the single market and production base envisioned by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations by 2015. Philippine Institute for Development Studies experts identified policy reforms to clear bottlenecks in investments as well as infrastructure and logistics in a recent seminar-workshop. PIDS senior research fellow Adoracion Navarro said aside from much-needed improvement and modernization of the country’s ports, conflict-of-interest situations in regulators–particularly the Philippine Ports Authority–must be removed and the Cabotage law must be reviewed to make the transport and logistics sector more competitive. "There is a need for a boom in infrastructure spending, although this is still limited to the 40 percent foreign participation in public utilities,” Navarro said in the seminar-workshop titled "AEC 2015: Development Challenges for the Philippines” held in Makati City. Navarro cited a 2011 survey by the Economic Research Institute for Asean and East Asia, in which 75 percent of companies indicated that "inadequate infrastructure and border barriers to movement of transport across countries in Asean member-states are serious barriers to Asean’s efforts in establishing AEC by 2015.”