I’ve got an article from INQUIRER.net “Filipino micro-business owners face a myriad of problems, foremost of these is the inability to take their businesses beyond the day-to-day peso-and-centavo earning grind.”
“A typical micro-businessman in the Philippine setting is the owner of a sari-sari store in an urban poor community. He (or she) is mostly contented to wait for the patronage of his neighbors and accidental passers-by.”
The good news for the microbusinesses in Philippines is that they can get help from Ka-Entrep, an initiative which is partly funded and supported by a group of micro-entrepreneurs from Belgium. “Filipino micro-business owners need to look beyond the day-to-day operations of their operations to become true entrepreneurs, says Palou Abustan, a resource person in the character formation workshops of Ka-Entrep, an organization committed to empowering micro-business entrepreneurs.”
If you kept track of my articles, I’ve already wrote about SME Insight Magazine from Philippine and later about 7 steps to start a business – advices from the Philippines
. If you are wondering about how is doing a business in Phippines, the Doing Business 2008 in Phippines is gathering the most important statistics. You could however have a better glance from the US Department of Commerce resources about Philippines . Here are the main ideas from the report:
- The Philippine business environment is highly personalized. A proper introduction by a trusted intermediary is the best way to enter this market.
- Filipino contacts prefer an atmosphere of calm and restraint, avoid direct confrontation, and would typically offer a polite reply coupled with a smile rather than an outright negative feedback to the other party’s ideas.
- Philippine business has its own etiquette. For example, as a show of respect, Filipinos usually address people by their titles (e.g., Architect Cruz, Attorney Jose, Dr. Romero)
- English is the official business language
Here is the complete report on doing business in the Philippines.
