Let me begin by thanking the leadership of the Davao City Chamber of Commerce and Industry for the honor and pleasure of this invitation.
            As your Vice President, I want to emphasize the irreplaceable value of close cooperation and coordination between business and government in creating the prosperity we seek for our country and people.  I believe this is what we see here in Davao.

            Your role is to create goods and services for the economy. The role of government is to provide the best possible environment for your noble enterprise. We do not expect business to run government. We have our elected and other officials for that. And we do not expect government to run your business.  That would be a serious disorder and bad for all concerned. As the economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman once said, “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there would be a shortage of sand.”
            The ideal relationship is one of cooperation and coordination, in which government and business remain in charge of their respective areas of special competence.
            The American publisher Henry R. Luce is absolutely right when he says, “Business, more than any other occupation, is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight.”

            You deal with futures---not only with that of commodities, but more importantly with that of your consumers, the community you serve, the people themselves.  These are the very same people the government serves, they define the irrevocable partnership between government and business.
            For more than two decades, it was my privilege to preside over this type of partnership in the country’s financial district,   as the longest serving mayor of Makati. I saw it work to the advantage of both parties.  Big business saw it work with the same result. So did the entire country and --- if you will permit me a modest dose of immodesty --- so did our closest and most distant neighbors.

            You will, therefore, forgive me if I feel and sound so upbeat, so bullish about making the Makati experience a model of what we can do together for the entire Philippines.  With your support, I see no reason why we should not be able to launch this program right here in Mindanao, and right in this assembly right now.
            As we all know, this program has numerous components.  The most obvious and the most urgent  include:  the need for a corruption-free, terror-free and highly efficient political and business environment;  the  need for adequate infrastructure to support the production and transport of competitive goods and services; the need for coherent   policies to make the future more predictable  among investors, producers and  consumers alike; the need to address the pressing  social needs of citizens and communities so as  to promote  competence, efficiency and a sound  work ethic in the workplace,  and stabilize the social conditions under which both government and  business interact daily with the public.
            Each of these concerns is of utmost importance to the overall program. And it is not easy to say which one comes first, and which one comes second or third. We must do all at once, but as chairman of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC), I have the special, direct and immediate responsibility of attending to that sector in all our communities whose present housing needs have not been met, and whose future housing needs we need to correctly predict and anticipate without creating a bubble that could blow up in our face.  This is where I would need your wholehearted support within the framework of our public-private partnership.
            Since my appointment as HUDCC chair, I have spent nearly every working day talking with the various experts and other interested parties.  I believe I have made it clear to everybody that this is one area, one assignment, where we cannot afford to give less than our best.  I have shared with the key officials of the shelter agencies my vision and mission as housing czar – namely, that we shall not only build houses for families but rather that we shall build homes for families where their bodies can rest and their spirit soar and find love and peace.
            Because we are a poor country, many will continue to be poor. But we hope to build communities where poverty is not defined by lack of human dignity, wretchedness or squalor and where everyone has the right to be treated by everyone else as a human being, with every opportunity to develop their human capital. 

            Communities where the informal settlers can live with a decent roof above their heads, with access to sources of employment and livelihood and the basic social services of government and without the perennial threat of being evicted. But in places like Davao this program cannot possibly succeed without the help of local government.  So with the help of the local government, Davao City is one place where we want to see it immediately take off.
            To succeed, we will need to develop an investment-friendly business climate for the housing sector and strong private sector support in the implementation of localized housing projects.  It would be good if the response should come first from our own local investors, but I would not be surprised if foreign investors come in strong even before the locals do. In fact, I suspect they just might do this.
            On my recent trip to Korea, I had the opportunity to talk about this in my meetings with government officials and private investors. As you know, Korean investors are already active in the country -- in energy, shipbuilding, infrastructure,  tourism,  manufacturing and even education, and there seems to be no limit to the number of Koreans coming here “to learn English,” even in far away places.
            Several years ago, they embarked on a massive housing program that called for the building of --- if memory serves --- several million units in three years. They have the experience, and they could come in to invest in our housing projects. But we need to reach out or open up not only to the Koreans but also to other sources of investment who share our vision of building solid and harmonious communities.
            Without doubt, the new administration has brought about renewed confidence in our country as an investment site.  We need to sustain that confidence. We need to show the world that we are prepared to exploit that opportunity for the maximum good of all our people and our friends who want to contribute to our progress. While we cannot abolish poverty completely within the lifetime of one or even several administrations, we must never hesitate to try, to show that we are determined to reduce it to the lowest level possible.
            To do this, the government must respond with affirmative action and preferential option for the poor and other related programs and policies. And the private sector must respond to it by reorienting their way of doing things so as to include the poor, rather than exclude them, in their plans and programs. The rich have a duty to discard the kind of attitude that once prompted the great George Bernard Shaw to say, “The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.” The poor, on the other hand, will have to reject any attitude or bias against the rich. For as Milton Friedman, whom we quoted earlier, said, “you cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.” Society must prosper as one, the rich and the poor together. 

            This is the vision we propose, this is the goal we seek. Let government and the private sector embrace it without any reservation so that peace and prosperity may be ours now and in ages to come.  Thank you for your time.​