By Veronica Uy
INQUIRER.net
Last updated 06:04pm (Mla time) 02/22/2007
MANILA, Philippines -- Seventy-six percent of businesses put up by overseas Filipino workers fail because the OFWs lack the skills, Foreign Affairs Assistant Secretary Luis Cruz said Thursday at the Dr. Alfredo J. Ganapin Advocacy Forum at the University of the Philippines.
Citing a study by the non-government organization Balikabayani, Cruz said the high failure rate was also because OFWs would lend money to their relatives.
“What makes the 24 percent succeed? Training and capability, and their families are relatively well-off,” he said.
Ildefonso Bagasao of the Economic Resource Center of the Overseas Filipinos, which teaches OFWs financial skills, and Noel Esquela of the Center for Migrant Advocacy confirmed Cruz's assessment.
Esquela said many OFWs were lured into business enterprises even if they have no background about the business. “They are usually caught by the phrase, 'Mura lang ito [This is cheap],'” he said.
Esquela, who was in a band that toured the world for 10 years, told the story of an OFW whose cousin convinced him to pay $3,000 for five hectares of fishpond.
As the OFW also needed to leave for work abroad, he left the fishpond to his cousin. “Expectedly the business failed because neither he nor his cousin was familiar with it,” Esquela said.
“Reintegration should start even before they leave for work abroad so that they can start saving and thinking about what to do with their money before they come home,” he added.
http://globalnation.inquirer.net/news/breakingnews/view_article.php?article_id=51009
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