As the host country for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting this year, the Philippines has announced its agenda, aimed at inclusive growth, through the development and integration of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). Anthony Abad, a partner in Abad, Alcantara, and Aquino Law Office, explained to the press what the Philippines must do. “We have to make a move toward regulatory and policy coherence. If we say we want inclusive growth by including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the global value chains, this entails the hard decision and difficult process of reforming the entire economy. That’s why we have had the so-called jobless growth. We create a lot of macroeconomic growth that we can be proud of, but it’s not distributed. Only certain individuals make all the money, and that makes [the economy] more unstable. An unstable economy, where the distribution of goods is unequal, leads to [...]
