THERE was a time when Filipino manufacturers gathered together and agreed to label their products, “Proudly Philippine-made.” Since I rarely see that label now, I assume it has not served the purpose of boosting customers’ preference for local products over imported ones. No wonder many factories have either retrenched or closed, worsening the unemployment problem.
Nobody can refute the argument that if we buy imports from China, Taiwan or Thailand, we help their laborers. If the employers of those countries opt to hire Filipinos, it’s to economize on payroll budget, thus enabling them to lower prices.
Be that as it may, Filipino workers abroad still earn better there than here where employment opportunities are scarce.
It’s not easy to convince the poor majority of Filipinos to be “patriotic” consumers. In buying products, they wrestle with the problem of affordability. If the local goods are cheaper than the imported ones, they naturally choose the local. Otherwise, they would go for the imported – not always because of colonial mentality but because of affordability.
Nowhere is this necessity to make both ends meet more visible than in ukay-ukay outlets, where the price-conscious buy slightly-used “relief” clothes, shoes, and pants with fewer pesos. Where else could one buy a pair of denims at a hundred pesos? A new ready-to-wear could cost 10 times as much. In other words, buying imported, slightly used items is tantamount to empowering the disempowered peso.
Ironically, among the imported goods’ patrons-by-necessity are minimum-wage earners who always demand higher wages.
When wages go high, prices will have to inflate and make the products less attractive to the poor and the middle-class, thus aggravating the survival problem of business.
Ironically, the aforesaid reality has forced local producers of quality products to tap the export market. Twice in two countries, I found that out for myself. While in Bangkok, Thailand, Panay News founder Danny Fajardo and I went shopping for polo shirts. I bought a checkered blue-and-white long-sleeved one, which I had presumed to be imported. I laughed on knowing that indeed it was; on the back collar were the brand and the words “Made in the Philippines.”
The next time around was in New York City during the Philippine Independence Day parade last June. My cousin Merla and her hubby Dods, both immigrants and US citizens, met me there and gave me a sling bag containing a heavy-duty jacket branded Cascades. It was only after I had returned to the Philippines that I noticed the “Made in the Philippines” tag.
What the above instances prove is that there is foreign market for high-quality Philippine-made products. And Filipinos thereat prefer to buy them, too.
Conversely, colonial mentality here at home has forced local manufacturers – say, of Marikina-made shoes – to rebrand their products for export. This I learned from a former Marikina mayor, Marides Fernando, who regaled us with stories of constituents buying shoes abroad, only to learn that they had originated from Marikina.
Indeed, while our craftsmen are capable of making quality products, most local manufacturers intentionally are forced to produce low-quality ones to win the patronage of the masa.
You see, the development of our economy has lagged behind our population growth. We have more mouths than we can afford to feed. In a past column, I cited an extreme example shown in a TV documentary where the Camenan family – a male street sweeper, his housewife and their 22 children – struggles for survival. Some of these children have married and have children of their own, hardly able to eat three times a day and unable to buy necessities. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
