Business for a better Philippines

I have always been grateful to have been given the opportunity, courtesy of Ramon del Rosario, to serve as Makati Business Club’s (MBC’s) executive director from 2011 to 2018—a good seven years of running a secretariat that helped big business pursue its agenda for constructive dialogue toward action for reform and nation building. I hope that those who came after me—Coco Alcuaz, Bobby Batungbacal, and Apa Ongpin—will always look back at their respective stints with gratefulness, knowing that they helped big business pay back and pay forward to the country and the Filipino people who made possible their business success.

Those years were an opportune time for MBC. We found common ground to work closely with former President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino’s administration on global competitiveness, ease of doing business, public-private integrity initiatives, and bureaucratic reform. MBC became a go-to partner for government—a sharp contrast to the Arroyo administration, when we were relegated to “outside-the-kulambo” status. We served as the de facto secretariat of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) Business Advisory Council, and with guidance from former executive director Bill Luz, we were instrumental in the Philippines’ Apec hosting in 2015. We also led business missions to the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Singapore, and hosted delegations in return.

Those seven years convinced me of one thing: big business can and must be part of the solution. Ramon and other MBC board members—Dick Romulo, Jaime Zobel de Ayala, Joey Cuisia, Doris Ho, Bobby de Ocampo, Guilly Luchangco, Ed Chua, and Tony Tan Caktiong—often stressed that building a better society cannot be left to government alone. Approaches differed, but they shared a belief: business must be an active force for nation-building.

At the time, Ramon, with Oscar Hilado and Mag Albarracin, was forging a new frontier through education. Tapping Chito Salazar’s experience, they launched Phinma Education. Many warned it would never prosper as a business. It did—and at scale. Today, Phinma Education serves over 180,000 students across 12 schools in the Philippines and Indonesia, proving that affordable, quality education can be both a mission and a market.

Jaime, through Ayala, was making mobile communication affordable via Globe, connecting Filipinos to digital opportunity. Ayala was also pivoting to health. In June 2015, it formed AC Health, starting with affordable medicines through Generika Drugstore. A decade later, AC Health runs 880 drugstores, 236 clinics, and 6 hospitals, posting P8.6 billion in revenue in 2023. Doris worked to improve seafarers’ lives—skills development and job security—for a sector that sends home $6.7 billion yearly. Tony Tan opened frontier Jollibee branches, creating jobs and affordable food in communities where few others invested.

What were they doing? Turning decades-long crises—education, health, jobs, and food—into opportunities. Business solutions to poverty’s drivers. Scalable, sustainable, delivering products and services that improve lives while protecting shareholder interests. Whenever I wavered on the role of business because of bottom-line pressure, they reminded me: profit makes it possible to expand a business that delivers social impact. Profit also fuels corporate foundations and disaster response.

But is big business already doing enough? It can choose to do more. One gap that De La Salle University’s (DLSU) professor Jesus Felipe has long flagged: big business has not yet come together with national and local governments to build the industries, especially agriculture, that can deepen an economy still propped up by overseas Filipino worker remittances. Agriculture employs 22 percent of workers but contributes just 8.6 percent of gross domestic product as of 2023. Big business understands this structural weakness and can help drive solutions. It won’t be easy; the government is often an unreliable partner. But maybe our crisis in governance also offers an immense opportunity.

At the DLSU Ramon V. del Rosario College of Business, a Center for Business and Society is housed. Its key mission: advocate for business as a force for good. Through this center, big business, the academe, and the government could work together to plot a national plan of action to push forward business solutions to what ails us as a nation. This plan could even include challenges to big business similar to Professor Felipe’s.

As a footnote to this oversimplified piece: the current global crisis, stoked largely by US President Donald Trump’s renewed tariff wars and geopolitical shocks, is another opening for big business. Filipino families are reeling, and the pain may worsen. While the government must deliver a quick, effective crisis response, big business can do its part: more flexible work, food and transport assistance, and stronger health benefits for employees and their families for the duration of this crisis. A rebalancing in favor of people may be in order on the triple bottom line.