Wanted: A drive for entrepreneurship among youths
THERE are two main reasons Filipinos prefer to work abroad than in the country; first, the low incomes across sectors; and second, there are few jobs available in the Philippines.
According to Philippine Consul Luis I. Ablaza Jr., the problem of most new graduates is to find a good job instead of starting their own business and be an entrepreneur.
“Soon after graduation, they always look for jobs, they don’t want to be an entrepreneur and create more jobs. [My advocacy really], is to encourage more people to engage in entrepreneurship no matter how small. The problem with most graduates [though is that] they want to start big at once. The right strategy is, you have to start small [and build experiences],” Ablaza said in an interview at the sidelines of the University of Santo Tomas (UST) College of Commerce and Business Administration’s 76th anniversary celebration.
?Ablaza knows whereof he speaks: he started a small business two years after his marriage; he and his wife decided to put up a pawnshop, the Ablaza Pawnshop, in Sampaloc, Manila.
They first tried to handle it without hiring any employees yet. He and his wife helped each other learn the dynamics of the business, from appraising the valuables pawned with them, to the technical and management side of the pawnshop.
“Do not be afraid to start small and then after that you can hire additional employees one by one; imagine if you are an entrepreneur and you own a small business and you can hire two people, that’s good already, because you have created jobs rather than getting employed,” he told the BusinessMirror.
It took the Ablazas more than 10 years to operate the business before they started to branch out. To date, they have now a total of 95 pawnshops around the metropolis and jobs for over 275 employees.
?Ablaza is targeting to expand to 100 branches and 300 jobs by the end of this year.
He hopes to pass the torch to his three children.
Asked how they were able to sustain their business for almost 47 years, he said an entrepreneur should learn to innovate or invent by opening other services like remittance service, payments center, among others.
?“We [have] to encourage more students after graduation to go into entrepreneurship, they can create more jobs, and if there are more entrepreneurs here, there would be job appreciation or there would be jobs available. And instead of going abroad, they can instead work here,” he emphasized.
?Thursday’s UST event was also the occasion to launch the Luis I. Ablaza Jr. Distinguished Professorial Chair in Entrepreneurship, with Ablaza’s donation of P1 million. Of this seed money, P100,000 in interest would be used for faculty development programs like studies abroad, one-week training, diploma courses and seminars or schemes to uplift the quality of instruction among some 120 professors of the College of Commerce (more than 100), Business Entrepreneur (5) and Business Development Advisers (15).
“Faculty who are teaching entrepreneurship would be more competent to handle the courses, so that they can really provide the highest standard in terms of excellence in terms of entrepreneurial instruction to the students,” College of Commerce Alumni Foundation Inc. president Angelita Algas-Gonzaga said in a separate interview.
During the celebration, the UST College of Commerce and Business Administration awarded two most outstanding alumni for this year: BusinessMirror president (Class 1983, Business Managament) Benjamin V. Ramos and Ramon R. Bantigue (Class 1987, Business Management).
Ramos is either a COO or member of the board in at least 20 companies, such as Eternal Gardens, Philippines Graphic Publications, Fortune General Insurance, Fortune Medicare, Aliw Broadcasting, Fortune Medicare, Citystate Savings Bank, to name a few.
Ramos said in his speech that being successful or being honored brings indescribable gladness but at the same time leaves a “sense of burden,” from the weight of expectations from other people.
The dread “stems from the thought, always at the back of our mind, that we have come to a hallowed institution of learning, and must face the judgment of an invisible jury—weighing what we have made of the time since we last left, of the talents that were so well-honed in an excellent academic environment, and of the character shaped in the ageless crucible of a? Thomasian school,” said Ramos.
“For a Thomasian like me, the work will never end,” he added.
Bantigue advised all aspiring entrepreneurs to always develop their competence, move out from their comfort zone and always think outside the box in order to be successful.
“I believe, whatever success I have today was not because I competed with my fellow officemates, rather I competed with myself.” One also will “never go wrong by being honest,” he said, inspiring the students of UST.
He is currently working as a vice-president and group audit head?in San Miguel Corp., one of the few multinational Filipino companies with major operations in Southeast Asia and Australia. S. Fabunan
Source: Business Mirror
