Articles, essays, and talks of Rey Lugtu

(Published in Business World under the View from Taft column, June 18, 2009) Amid the mixed forecasts on the global economic rebound, experts on the outsourcing and offshoring industry are consistently painting a rosy picture toward the end of the year. According to the 2009 edition of the Black Book of Outsourcing, more than half of companies polled say they expect their spending on outsourcing services to come back and return to pre-recession levels. Similarly, a Business Processing Association of the Philippine (BPA/P) survey among industry players showed that 96% of respondents representing organizations that provide non-voice Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services believe that 2009 prospects for their organizations are good, excellent, or outstanding. More than half of the respondents, 51%, said prospects are excellent. All these forecasts bode well for the local industry, but more likely than not, the industry will never be the same after the global slump that we are experie

(Published in Manila Standard Today under the Greenlight column, June 8, 2009) The problems with our health care system are well-known and well-documented- and endlessly debated. What’s not so apparent is that many of them arise because the system isn’t, in fact, a system. Connecting the system Rising costs, limited access, high error rates, lack of coverage, poor response to chronic disease and the lengthy development cycle for new medicines- most of these could be improved if we could link diagnosis to drug discovery to health care are providers to insurers to employers to patients and communities. Today, these components, processes and participants that compromise the vast health care system aren’t connected. Duplication and hand offs are rampant. Deep wells of life-saving information are inaccessible. Take for instance, in 2005, the Health Education Reform Order (HERO) reported that the total health care expenditure in the Philippines amounted to P165 billion, or about 3.5 percent

(Published in Business Mirror under the Mirror Image column, June 3, 2009) Traffic congestion is choking the air and economies of cities everywhere. Worldwide, cities are wrestling with the environmental, economic and social impact of increasing urban congestion, resulting from too many vehicles on roads built during the last century and demand simply exceeding capacity. According to the US Department of Transportation, traffic congestion costs the United States $200 billion annually. Not only is this a huge waste of money, the Texas Transportation Institute reported that it also contributes to a loss of 7 billion hours stalled in traffic and $2.3 billion gallons of wasted fuel per year. In the Philippines there are 3,000 passenger buses making a total 32,000 trips that go along Edsa daily, according to the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA). An average bus can accommodate 60 people. Occupancy rate of these buses is only 66 percent per vehicle. This means that on the average