No to anticompetition law

IF the proposed anticompetition law seeks to stop giant local companies from keeping local competition down and foreign competition out, then that law is a yes. But if it seeks to break up local giants, which are now dominating the Philippine market and getting the lion’s share of a cash-rich, even if entirely deindustrial­ized country—after beating the foreigners who were tak­ing all the money long ago—then it is eh beeeeg faht no.

An anticompetition law will force giant Filipino con­glomerates to break up and sell the pieces in chewable sizes to cash-poor foreigners, who will borrow locally, anyway. The big banks should conspire not to lend them.

Buying what is there and already doing well is called a “brownfield investment.” The purpose: pillage the do­mestic market and siphon inflated profits abroad, along with giant salaries and bonuses for expatriates and do-nothing consultants of the same skin color. On the other hand, “greenfield” investments set up new ventures with money sourced abroad, and transfer cutting-edge tech­nology and best practices to where none existed before. Assembly plants are not greenfield.

It took the Filipino giants long struggles, costly fail­ures and small pay for the owners themselves to grow big in a free-market or free-trade environment that was designed to keep the Filipino small and short and big foreign business big and tall.

Big is better if it is Filipino, because capital has a nationality. I will slap anyone who refers to transnational corporations. No such things. Indeed, home is better than abroad. Hence, this expression: “a home-court advantage.” Big is good; big are economies of scale, so big gets bigger. But big is bad if it is foreign, which will destroy what we already have, milk it by big bonuses, siphon profits abroad and make sure that no Filipino ever gets big again.

If foreign competition wants to break up Filipino gi­ants, let the free market do it. Do not make a Philippine law tailor-made for foreigners do the job for them. Foreign competition does not believe in Filipino competi­tion in their home countries. It only believes in foreign competition here and elsewhere abroad. They want to be the next BDO? The next SM? The next Ayala? The next San Miguel? Then let them take those companies on, but with their own money—as is, who is, wherever they find the local giants—or else they can go to hell.

Taiwan, South Korea, Japan—and before them, Brit­ain and the United States, followed by Germany, France, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries—firmly excluded foreigners from their economies; grew their economies by trial and error at public expense with giant state-owned enterprises; and culled their native-nurtured industries, leaving only the strong until they were ready to take on the rest of the world on the free world’s free-market or free-trade terms. –Teddy Locsin Jr., Businessmirror