I’m in for the removal of the 60/40 provision in our constitution. I believe it’s going to provide us with more choices and the monopoly on services and products will stop. What this will mean to ordinary people like you and me: more options for consumers, more room for small businesses to grow and better opportunities for workers.

Here’s my two cents:

1. We need to hurry! A quarter of a century should be enough time to realize that the policy isn’t working for us, and for people to say that we need more time to analyze the situation is just plain crazy. Our country is in desperate need of change.
2. I don’t want cheaters coming in doing business with us. We need honest businessmen and investors! The 60/40 provision is teaching foreigners to break our laws and what’s worse is that we’re assisting them. We condone law breaking because the policy itself is an obstacle in economic growth.
3. If retail companies come in, there will be a surge of quality products coming into the market. There would be more goods to choose from; and the demand for low quality products might decline. There’s no guarantee that piracy will stop, or that replicas will no longer be peddled in the streets; but it gives YOU and ME a chance to buy authentic and high quality products for less than what they cost today.
4. The power to choose service providers. Meralco monopolizes power distribution in Manila, Smart & Globe for broadband internet and MWC for water. If huge companies come in with great business models, we won’t only see services improve we might even see lower prices on said services.
5. Small to medium businesses will flourish if more foreign companies are able to come in. The demand for food, clothing, travel and entertainment will increase. The little people will be given a chance to expand their businesses or even have the courage to put one up.
6. Our professionals won’t need to go to a foreign country to get a job and be away from their families. They’ll have more job opportunities here. There will be a demand for workers and the pay would be equal to their skills. I want to add that if we enforce the labor code as strictly as possible and make sure that these foreign businesses hire employees for long term (and not contractual basis like what retail giant SM is doing) the population would have proper health care and retirement benefits.
7. Our tourism industry will take a positive hit. These businessmen are going to come to our country not only to do business they’ll want to go sightseeing, too. And if they like what they see they’ll want to bring their families and friends for vacations. What we need is positive feedback from travellers who have been here and experienced what we have to offer.
8. More land will be developed. There’s a huge chunk of land that remains unused or misused in provincial areas. Money will come in to these smaller barrios and the local governments would have funds to build new roads and protect land from exploitation.
9. Poverty is the main reason why we have so many petty criminals. And if those who are in desperate need of money have opportunities to earn honestly, I believe that the crime rates will go down and we’ll feel safe in our homes again.

I don’t understand why my friends think that it’s a bad idea to junk this policy. If the policy isn’t helping the people, then it’s probably not a good idea to keep it. It might be working for a few, but the majority of the people are being strangled by this policy.

There’s no perfect system, but the least we can do is try out a few new ideas instead of waiting around doing nothing – and then expecting other people to give us handouts like we deserve special treatment. We’re already knee deep in crap, that the only way to go is up.