Speech of Secretary Ramon M. Lopez
The launch of Go Lokal! Souvenir Collection
4 July 2018, DTI Main Building, Makati
“DTI Go Lokal!: Supporting Young Makers and Artists”
Good Afternoon, everyone. It is another exciting afternoon for the Go Lokal! project. First of all, I would like to thank all of you, I’m pleasantly surprised to see you here and I really appreciate your presence.
Go Lokal! really started with a simple vision: to mainstream the Micro Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) products.
Every time MSMEs want to enter a mainstream market (malls), they have to pay a listing fee of two to three million pesos, or rent space. But with Go Lokal!, in cooperation with many of the retailers here in the country, we do our share in helping the MSMEs gain free access to the mainstream market.
The beauty of this is that they get to be discovered in Go Lokal! stores. And when people [from these] bigger companies, discover that, “Oh, you’re a part of Go Lokal!? Then I will waive my listing fee.” They can now enter the mainstream market, and it will bring no cost if any, a very minimal cost for Micro SMEs.
This really promotes and encourages more and more MSMEs because the incentive for improving their products is they gain access here. So this really promotes and incentivizes MSMEs to continuously innovate on their products.
The good news here is that our Go Lokal! store started from one in Robinsons to around 50 now with 315 MSME suppliers, 81 MSMEs mainstreamed, and 600 products in malls and supermarkets. Ganoon na kadami, and we just started middle or late last year.
We are very happy that we have come this far and hopefully this is just the beginning. Ibig sabihin ng beginning, nowhere to go but up. We expect this to really go up.
We will also be in Kiss and Fly in NAIA 3, that will be launched this month, July 19. Ang daming development. We are in PAL Mabuhay Miles Magazine, we now have LED billboards along EDSA, in partnership with MMDA, we are covered by Philippine Star, Inquirer, some magazines as well.
But, you know, this project is not really for us. It is really for the MSMEs. And this is really the priority sector of our President Duterte. This is our way to really make sure that we always uphold inclusive growth. And by empowering MSMEs, you empower the nation.
They’re not just simple MSMEs now, they are more empowered, smarter entrepreneurs with products that have better design and packaging. These will become higher value products. And that is changing their lives. We want the micro to become small, small to become medium, and eventually the large. That’s the overall concept.
For all those participants and suppliers of Go Lokal!, I know that next challenge is when they get to discover the people order or the buyers will order in volume. So the next challenge is “Oh, support na. Wala na kaming pang-increase ng production.”
Now don’t worry, because we have the Pondo sa Pagbabago at Pag-asenso we have the financing source for you. What we are working now is expanding their operation using Pondo sa Pag-babago at Pag-asenso—that’s President Duterte’s idea to battle and replace the 5-6.
You don’t have to borrow from 5-6 and the nicer story also is if you get bigger, and you borrow bigger amount, higher than 200,000 pesos, we can let our SB Corporation lend to you directly. So you are categorized as a medium scale producer and you will get access into lower interest rate fund.
Hindi na s’ya microfinancing rate. Kasi microfinancing rate, they are still in 20% per annum. Kasi ano ‘yan, higher operating cost, and a lot of people to disperse and collect, so 20% is a typical interest but if you’re in that medium-sized loan already, you can get it at about 7 or 8% per annum.
All of these are per annum; compare it to 20% per day or 20% per month of the 5-6. In the DTI, we try to provide the 360-degree support in market access, finance, equipment, training, and many more.
So, once again, thank you for joining us. This is hopefully our way to really keep better chances to our Micro SMEs up their lives and to become more prosperous Filipinos and as our President says, more comfortable life for all of you. Salamat po.
END