Wednesday, May 14, 2008 Editorial: Lessons from shipyard fiasco
For all the controversy it has generated, Hanjin’s hitherto withdrawn shipbuilding project in Misamis Oriental at least left those within its spectrum tough lessons in corporate responsibilities.
Corporate in that local government units (LGUs)—empowered to spend and create income-generating enterprises—are commercial entities themselves. The South Korean giant, meanwhile, has a wealth of experience dealing with big-ticket contracts to know corporate ethics in dozens of countries it has worked with.
We take this matter in a corporate purview, as the problem is believed to have taken root within the LGUs, namely, the Tagoloan and Villanueva towns—the seat of what would have been the world’s fourth largest shipyard.
Accusations flew thick in the air that when the project started early this year, officials in both towns had strewn all possible roadblocks to delay the project. Then the extortion-bribery case came like a thunderbolt, with no less than the chief of the Interior department ordering an investigation into it.
Hanjin knew that no business venture or commercial undertaking—big or small, foreign or Filipino-owned—may be undertaken outside the ambit of the Philippine Law. May it be an environmental clearance or a simple town permit, investments worth as little as few thousand pesos or as gargantuan as $2-billion are treated equally by law. And in the Philippines, laws of local import are as equal as those enacted by Congress—and are bound to be followed.
It is impossible to lay the blame exclusively on one party alone, as it is unbelievable to say that one of the other had tried to scuttle a mutually beneficial commercial venture. The shipyard could have employed more than 40,000 workers. Facing enormous area constraint in South Korea, Hanjin had chosen the Phividec for its huge potential.
The project failed—as it is at the moment—because neither Hanjin nor the concerned town officials acted responsibly—as had been expected of them as corporate beings.
