Join YouNoodle | Login

  • theBUSINESS Paper: Manila

    07 December 2009
  • Header

  • The Philippines links up with Global Entrepreneurship Week UK 2009 world celebration

    by MARC GUERRERO
    Editor in Chief, theBUSINESS Paper

    MANILA, The Philippines (26 Nov 2009, News and Views You can Use) – The Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry-Quezon City (PCCI-QC) showed the chambers of 15 cities and one municipality the way in carrying health and wellness as the one town-one product (OTOP) program of not just QC but all of Metro Manila, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) reported.

    In a whole-day triple-event at the Trinoma mall complex today, PCCI-QC President Hernando B Delizo, MD, MBA, FPCP led the 60,000 stakeholders of QC business community in inaugurating the DTI health and wellness OTOP for the National Capital Region (NCR) via a morning health fair, a business bus launch, and an afternoon business wellness forum.

    Past QC chamber leaderships of noted nursing reviewer Dr Carl Balita and Capitol Medical Center’s Carmina Desales had first batted for health and wellness OTOP for QC which the local government of outgoing QC Mayor Feliciano ‘SB’ Belmonte had fully supported. Dr Delizo, a private-sector exponent of anti-aging and of medical travel to The Philippines, sustained the initiatives and even helped expand the concept to cover the entire Metro Manila. DTI had concurred with the idea, DTI-NCR director Grace Soller for Mandaluyong, San Juan, Quezon City and Marikina said, because “we at the DTI main had found that all other Metro cities have almost similar medical and healthcare features (hospitals and wellness facilities abound, for example) as that of QC.” Los Banos in Laguna, which is south of Metro Manila, whose LGU leader, Mayor Caesar Perez, has been reportedly lobbying to add health and wellness also as OTOP of LB, in addition to the “original buko pie,” may do so, Soller opined when asked of the related OTOP issue in the provinces, but “maybe, natural health and wellness, because of the Los Banos natural hot springs,” which is the first spa concept anyway. It was reported in another instance that LB mayorable Anthony ‘Ton’ Genuino, son of Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (Pagcor) chairman and CEO Efraim Genuino, may carry on incumbent LB Mayor Perez’s natural health and wellness OTOP wish for Los Banos, if appropriate. Genuino’s other son, Erwin, is mayoral running mate of vice mayorable Jobelle Salvador in Makati, The Philippines’ premier financial district, under Bigkis-Pinoy Party.

    Dr Delizo, who runs such successful “healthcare retail entrepreneurship” models as Clinica Manila, Wellness Place, Mediserv, Wellcare Clinics and Medcentral, stressed, however, that his idea of health and wellness OTOP is “not confined to organizations and practitioners in the medical profession.” Delizo pointed out, “health and wellness is the ‘business of every business.’” The well being of commercial and industrial business, he explained, including those in the manufacturing, sales, human resources, IT, entertainment, trading, services and even agricultural business, are covered by the PCCI-QC’s health and wellness OTOP advocacy.

    ‘Be Well, Choose Health’

    TRIPLE events highlighted the PCCI-QC Trinoma Mall health and wellness OTOP for Metro Manila inauguration, Nov 26.

    The first event in the morning was a health fair, manned by Soller, Ed Cabral and other DTI-NCR workhorses, inside the lobby of the mall where booths of some of the 60 public and private participating hospitals and wellness facilities in QC led by Saint Luke’s Medical Center, Amezcua and Asian Institute of Healthcare (AIH), were set up, free clinics conducted, products displayed, samplings made and services promoted. DecisiveMoments spatography (spa photography) specialist Miguel ‘Mel’ Cortez also put up a booth.

    Quezon City mayorable Herbert Bautista and vice mayorable Joy Belmonte, SB’s only daughter, together with DTI assistant secretary Ma Theresa ‘Angel’ Pelayo-Ty, a major exponent of Metro health and wellness OTOP, graced the health fair launch where they reiterated their respective offices’ strong support system, and not just through lip service but in deed, to the “Be Well, Choose Health” campaigns of PCCI-QC, DTI and public-private partners of the healthy causes.

    After lunch, a mobile business bus, aptly dubbed as the green “Mo’Biz… Good health starts here,” second event, was inaugurated by the HealthcareBusinessDevelopment (HBD) Partners Inc with some help from the K-Na Propel program of the Office of Senator Francis ‘Kiko’ Pangilinan, PLDT SME Nation, SB administration, OneHealthCard, and theINSTITUTE of Health and Wellness PHILIPPINES Foundation Inc.

    Pangilinan begged off to grace his bus launch due to some pressing urgencies with his daughter with Sharon Cuneta. Instead, leaders of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) national chamber pinched hit for the senator who is no longer in the running for president nor vice president in 2010, together with DTI Asec Pelayo-Ty who was Pangilinan’s first executive assistant back in the QC council, QC Councilor Vincent Belmonte, an SB nephew, and local chamber leaders led by Dra Lynne Balita of Little Lambs children’s wellness place and Fiorgelatto cafe, PCCI-QC founding treasurer.

    Mo’Biz or Mobile Skills and Entrepreneurs Training Center for better business and cleaner environment, according to PCCI-QC President Delizo, is a 20-seater luxury bus with TV and audio system inside, couple of classrooms for modular training custom built, and CR downstairs, donated by the Wellness Institute of Japan to the PhilJapan WellnessWellness company. It will ply the highways of Metro Manila and the provinces with Quezon City as base, bearing knowledge and knowhow on popular technologies (PopTech), 48 weeks every year starting this year.

    The Mo’Biz health and wellness bus to-go – equated with CNN “hero of 2009” Efren Penaflorida’s KaritonKlasrum schools-on-carts – will go to the barangays and the communities to popularize skills training on waste management and recycling, barangay health services, security services, travel services, tourguiding services, housekeeping, front office services, tourism promotion, massage therapy like reflexology, pharmacy services, bookkeeping, ICT, computer hardware servicing, cable TV installation, operations and maintenance; language and culture, and basic entrepreneurship, startup and microbusiness enterprise.

    Walk the Talk

    THE third and culminating event was a business community stakeholders’ forum at the Cabalen restaurant on the third floor of Trinoma diced by sumptuous Pampango and native cuisines. Hosted by PCCI-QC vice president Elma Lagamson of Convergence Immigration company, the stakeholders meeting graced by Metro Manila chambers stalwarts led by Antonio Keh and Nora Lacuna, commenced with a prayer led by another PCCI-QC VP, Rafael Chico of RSC Consult company, and welcome remarks by Ronald Yap of Storage Providers, a PCCI-QC founding director.

    Various resource persons expounded on how to, and why, go the way of local integration for global outlook in matters of healthy business and entrepreneurship.

    Delizo ventured his health and wellness quest map values towards moving to the right direction.

    Banker Deanne Hernandez, resource director of Philippine Retirement Incorporated (PRI) who turned a “Deanne of wellness,” convinced the predominantly-young audience on the wisdom of going natural in food and other things, health. She lamented the fact that going-organic for modern-day Filipinos has just begun, when natural was the ancient Filipinos’ way of life.

    Spa Association of the Philippines Inc (SAPI) consultant Marjorie Lopingco, president of her own BHY Corporation, wowed the audience with her exciting new statistics validating the hope in the alternative, complementary, integrative and holistic health sectors that spa and wellness business in The Philippines will weather the global crisis, because of the world famous “Filipino healing hands and caring hearts,” not to mention the country’s geography, natural resources, essential oils, herbs and healthy character.

    Kathy Veneracion of Amezcua talked about preventive medicine, and revealed for the first time to QC businessmen, that her mother company back in Singapore, the Q Lifestyle, though owned and funded by international sources are “managed by Filipino medical and health experts.”

    Dr Sarah Nunez, international marketing manager for Saint Luke’s, made it known that all state-of-the-art medical technologies in the US and European Union have already been available locally for anyone who can afford them in her premier cooperative hospital, the political class’ choice facilities.

    Accreditation Canada’s Alan Flowers discussed the topic “creating a medical travel destination” for The Philippines as against India or Thailand and other countries, in view of the long wait his compatriots have to deal with in order to avail of their public health rights and privileges as Canadian citizens. Canadians are next-border neighbors to Americans whom their one-year old Obama administration is gifting with a multibillion-dollar bipartisan health reform packages.

    Subdivision Developers Association president Banson Chua shed light on the QC concept of tri-development being implemented by Mayor Sonny Belmonte, albeit in a very general sense, but in relation to elderly or senior housing clustering of the whole PRI programs aimed at attracting millions of balikbayans and foreign retirees to The Philippines. The forum dubbed it, originally as creating neighborhood master plan for health and wellness, though there were some last-minute improvisations later on.

    Joy Belmonte closed the forum promising sustainable development of what may come in 2010 and after, following the footsteps of her father, after Delizo hosted a panel discussion on his PCCI-QC business models of service clustering and regional hub buildup.

    PH link to Global Entrepreneurship Week UK 2009 celebration

    THE November 26th Trinoma tri-event of the PCCI-QC was linked to the worldwide celebration of Global Entrepreneurship Week UK 2009 as the country’s contribution to advancing the purposes of genuine entrepreneurship across the universe. This done, even as Filipinos from all walks of life are busying themselves for the Christmas holidays and May 10th political fever next year, amidst the Maguindanao massacre of journalists, lawyers and Muslim clans, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo humbling herself to a Pampanga congressional seat, Joseph Estrada, Imelda Marcos and Manny Pacquiao running again, and Noynoy Aquino and the resurrected Liberal Party (LP) trying to sustain the public awe of Cory-Ninoy Aquino magic in the hearts of the Filipino until May 10, 2010, as backdrops.

    “Where do we go from here?,” the forum asked. Do. Young entrepreneurs are challenging the elder businessmen of the Philippine chamber movement: “Walk the talk.” Be.

    -With additional reporting from Krim Aldave, Raph Torralba (photos), Karen Sepacio (videos), Myles Santos (arts), and Noel Onglengco (PCCI-QC), Amy Sario (HBD Group). newsandviewsyoucanuse #