Die Inefficient Pinoy Producers Die

 By Morz C. Ortigoza

I told my son Jigger to order me a buy - one- take -one return to seller if not satisfied in 20 days pretty brown and black pure cow hide or leather male belts from China I saw being sold at FB. "Teka wag mo munang orderen. Kung P1,800 yan P900 ang isa. Check ko muna sa Shopee baka mas mura". I saw a piece worth P360 (P310 plus P50 shipping fee to our house in Dagupan City) in Shopee. "Order mo na sa online mas mura sa Shopee. Pag sa mall yan mga P2000 isa niyan," I said.

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Shopee Pte Ltd is a Singaporean multinational technology company which focuses mainly on e-commerce. Headquartered under Sea Group (previously known as Garena). Shopee was first launched in Singapore in 2015, and later expanded its reach to Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brazil, and Mexico.

The P360 pretty authentic leather belt I ordered in Shopee. The mall owners anxieties with online sellers like Shopee, Lazada, those in Facebooks, Alibaba, and others have been aggravated by the rampages of the dreaded pandemic Corona Virus Disease-19. COVID-19 became a game changer for the expensively selling giant retail stores in the Philippines as people sandbagged in their homes while mall owners content themselves with lethargic number of consumers. Mabuti rin iyan dahil iyong kikitain ng mga malls napunta na sa mga riders, enterprising Pinoys that sell at the social media, and other online sellers. Mura na safe ka pa, anak ng bakang dalaga!

It currently serves consumers in Southeast and East Asia, as well as South America and Mexico, who want to purchase and sell their goods online as of 2021. It was called one of the "five disruptive e-commerce startups we saw in 2015" by Tech In Asia for its technical advancement and mass scale, thanks to the mobile and social elements integrated into the model. (Wikipedia)

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Now let's go to the jugular, the reason why Marikina made leather products are going down because they sell them expensively. Our garments industry went bankrupt in the 1990s because cost of production in the Philippines was expensive. To those who cried we should buy local to save jobs in the country: Better ask those who wanna buy leather belt worth P360 each from China and at our mall that cost them an arm and a leg. Online cheap selling is a threat not only to Filipino inefficient producers but to the mall owners who used to monopolize commodities being sold to us captive buyer. The creation of the World Trade Organization was the best thing to happen where cheap goods like pork and rice benefited those poor people in the urban centers. However, it is a bane to farmers and those traders like the Marikina shoes and belt makers and those garments sellers. Blame the government who did not improve their lot when WTO was born in1994 through projects like irrigation and machinery. Now they are suffering. But we could not stop importation of cheap goods because member countries of the WTO will retaliate not to buy our other export products like electronics from our Special Economic Zones thus undermining employment of Filipinos there.

So let's just leave the WTO to save our inefficient producers? Susmariosep, that will be sheer stupidity as we become a pariah States like those Real Communist Countries Cuba and North Korea.