Articles, essays, and talks of Rey Lugtu

(Published in Focus, newsletter of Financial Executives of the Philippines, January, 12 2012) Philippine business in 2011 was rife with gains, as well as losses. Some are outright disruptive in business, others are simply entertaining. What matter is that companies and business executives learn from the challenges of last year, and do better this New Year ahead. I have listed top five newsmakers in 2011 that, in one way or another, touched our professional lives and personal lives. Top of my list of newsmakers in 2011 is the real estate boom which the country has been experiencing these past few years and will continue through 2012, according to real estate advisory firm CB Richard Ellis Philippines. The surge in the industry is brought forth by expansions in business process outsourcing business, and rise in condominium developments. Interestingly, the CBRE data and forecasts somehow contradict the CNBC list of the 10 most difficult countries to do business in from 50 of the w

(Published in Business Mirror under the Free Enterprise column, January 11, 2012) IN 2008, I wrote an article in BusinessMirror titled “Can outsourcing be stopped?” where I mentioned Barack Obama’s repeated spiel in his campaigns that, if elected, he would discourage companies from “shipping jobs overseas” by taking away tax breaks, or by giving benefit to those corporations that keep jobs domestically. From then on, the US government did not have a clear policy on outsourcing; thus, the business process outsourcing industry in the Philippines and elsewhere like India still experienced spectacular double-digit growth, helping spur the economies of the two countries. But just last week, President Obama jumpstarted an effort to urge US business leaders to keep jobs at home instead of outsourcing them overseas as he rolled out a new election-year theme aimed at courting middle-class voters. This has been the long-standing campaign of the US government against outsourcing, which was