Intel Ends Presence In Philippines

[Burai]

my prof once said it would be better kung local citizens ang magtatayo ng big companies dito than foreign kasi sa atin naman tong bansa not theirs tapos masyado na nila dahandahang nadodominate mga bagay bagay.
basta mahaba at reasonable naman para suportahan mga local companies natin yada yada yada~

but then again,

kalimutan nyo na yung statement nyang yan kung ang usapan is greed at lust for money..

[CVT]

True but in case some of you don't remember or don't know, Intel had a much larger presence years ago than that of the "small" plant they would be closing soon. Did any of you know that the Pentium 4 chip was, well, researched and manufactured here in the Philippines? They had a huge presence here: from a research and testing center to a huge wafer manufacturing plant. Anyways let me continue my story on why we may trace Intel's closure on the Cavite local government.

Some time back, local government of Cavite took an interest in what Intel was earning. Cutting the long story short, they decided to tell Intel that the chip giant owed the local government of Cavite millions of pesos in taxes. Intel countered that they shouldn't pay the amount being asked for because they have an agreement with the Philippine government that they (Intel) are operating with a tax holiday. Meaning they are except from certain (heck may be even more!) taxes.

The Cavite government won't budge even if Intel showed them proof that the chip giant does really operate with special privileges in terms of taxes. Intel took the case to court and to the BOI. Well, we all know how "fast" our judiciary system operates here so the case just sat on the case. Same with the BOI which (I think) did nothing. As the case draged on, the local government of Cavite decided to put interest on the amount that they are asking Intel to pay. So, the chip giant finally put their foot down and told the government that they'd rather close the plant than to pay the allegedly exorbitant amount of taxes that was being asked. Our government didn't do anything, much less the local government of Cavite.

So, Intel scaled down in a big way their operations in Cavite by closing perhaps their largest wafer manufacturing plant and moving the plant elsewhere. So where did our government end up? Poorer by millions and a lot of people loosing their jobs, a few of which are my IT and engineer friends.

Fast forward today. Yes, Intel is scaling down it's operations worldwide due to the global economic crisis but what if their huge wafer manufacturing plant was still here? Maybe the chip giant will just be scaling down operations, not closing down the whole barn.

I am working in the same industry.

I never heard about the issue of Intel with the local government of Cavite so this is news to me, but I am not surprised.

They do not have wafer manufacturing in their Cavite plant (the industry calls this wafer fab[rication]). What they have is assembly and final test. I think that they're doing wafer probe there, too.

Anyway, IMO, they're using the current economic downturn to get out of the country.

The management of their plant in Cavite has not learned from the big issue they had when they're still operating in Makati. I'd rather not dwell on the details, but it's basically the same issue that we all cry out to our government. The result? A few walked out with a lot of dough to last them a lifetime, while a couple of thousands were pushed out not knowing where they would get their next meal.

Our company is currently suffering one of the more serious collateral damages because of their greediness. Why? Because one of their former executives is now one of our executives. And, he does not like Filipinos because of his bad experiences with his former plant in the Philippines. No amount of persuasion and documentation based on our performance could ever erase his bad perception of the Filipinos. Sad, but true.

7303:soda:

[emanzano]

this news just makes me wanna cry...

[uls]

kaya dati ko pa sinasabi hindi business friendly ang Pinas

ang tingin ng mga tao sa mga investors walking wallet

wala pinagkaiba ang mga extortionist na naka barong sa mga extortionist na nakatira sa gubat

[CVT]

ang sinabi naman sa'kin iba. may sindikato na daw dan sa cavite processing zone. they prey on employees at pag hindi ka sumunod sa kanila, they threathen the families.

that's why, from production to temporary warehousing ng newly produced intel chips na nasa sariling compound ng Intel, nananakaw pa as in isang truck ng newly produced chips. gano kaliit lang ang isang chip. yun sikyu, yun driver, yun visor lahat hawak ng sindikato kaya walang magawa

which makes me wonder, sa gilmore magugulat ka na lang may isang fresh batch ng intel chips na sobrang mura na i-offer na mabilis mauubos. ang sabi grey market daw coming from other asian countries. eh tayo nga lang ang meron dito saka Malaysia eh

from the looks of it, it's an American company abused and victimized by our own culture. kaya siguro nabwisit na sila ng husto.

Also, China (Shanghai) and Vietnam.....

7404:laundry:

[russpogi]

Ang sakit naman makabasa ng ganitong balita... Sobrang sakit...

[niky]

my prof once said it would be better kung local citizens ang magtatayo ng big companies dito than foreign kasi sa atin naman tong bansa not theirs tapos masyado na nila dahandahang nadodominate mga bagay bagay.
basta mahaba at reasonable naman para suportahan mga local companies natin yada yada yada~

but then again,

kalimutan nyo na yung statement nyang yan kung ang usapan is greed at lust for money..

Typical college prof... leftist tendencies... tell him to tell that to workers laid off because of unions targetting multinational companies...

Yes, it sucks if the industry is owned by a foreigner... but foreigners pay good wages, lifting more of our countrymen out of the mire.

Yes, support local industry, but if we don't have our own "Intel", it's not unreasonable to let them set up... let our people learn from working there, than take that knowledge and use it to set-up local industries to compete with the bigwigs.

That's the Chinese way, of doing it. Tit for tat... you use me, I use you, we're both happy until I become more succesful than you...

[Horsepower]

Vietnam opened up and Intel simply moved there.

A typical employee's monthly salary there is only 2.5-3k pesos. It's a no brainer actually. 99% of the manufacturing is automated anyway so there's really not that much need for particular set of workers.

At the end of the day, it's just a company hiring people who in turn get salary. It's just that their services are not needed anymore so everyone needs to move on (that's the only thing to do actually).

BTW, aside from the foreign firms, there are lots of Filipino manufacturing firms planning to move to Vietnam (that's why I got wind of the opening and the salary rates).

[goldencoil]

ang sinabi naman sa'kin iba. may sindikato na daw dan sa cavite processing zone. they prey on employees at pag hindi ka sumunod sa kanila, they threathen the families.

that's why, from production to temporary warehousing ng newly produced intel chips na nasa sariling compound ng Intel, nananakaw pa as in isang truck ng newly produced chips. gano kaliit lang ang isang chip. yun sikyu, yun driver, yun visor lahat hawak ng sindikato kaya walang magawa

which makes me wonder, sa gilmore magugulat ka na lang may isang fresh batch ng intel chips na sobrang mura na i-offer na mabilis mauubos. ang sabi grey market daw coming from other asian countries. eh tayo nga lang ang meron dito saka Malaysia eh

from the looks of it, it's an American company abused and victimized by our own culture. kaya siguro nabwisit na sila ng husto.

Ex-Intel employee here. I worked there from 1999 to 2001 as an Engineer. Lumabas na tong balita about closing Intel a year ago from blogs. From what I learned from my ex-colleagues, ginather muna sila sa Cafeteria then may mga handang pagkain pa yata. That's the time the management dropped the news about the plan of closing the facility. Una pa atang reason na lumabas eh safety nung building ang reason which I dont buy.

I was able to catch up with my colleagues a couple months ago. Napagusapan nga namin na yung cause (sindikato) na sinabi ni Gen. Miting ang possible reason. It involved some Operators hanggang sa Security. There was one time nga daw na dumating pa ang FBI from the US to make the investigation. Pinalitan na din daw once yung security agency na may hawak ng Intel. For some time, nawala yung nakawan pero bumalik din kinalaunan.

Again, these are all allegations lang and I dont want to conclude. The bottomline is aalis ang Intel sa Philippines and it's sending signals to other MNCs to probably to do the same thing as well.

On the lighter side, yung mga kakilala ko na nawalan na ng work (mga nagpa early terminate), malaki ang nakuhang separation pay. Hirap lang kasi ngayon, mahihirapan sila maghanap ng kapalit na work dahil sa economic situation.

Haaay.

[1D4LV]

as a business people, I AGREE! kaya sari-sari store lang ang nilagay ko para di pansinin at maliit ang capitalization.. pag ginamitan ko ng big-words like "trading" or "general merchandise", "incorporated", "corporation", "supermarket/store" then bukod sa barangay, may BIR, local government pang maghaharas sa yo....

ok lang kung barangay, kasi since malapit sila and yun mga tao na araw araw mong ka-transaction.

tama ka dyan bro... ngayon alam ko na.
spent so much on business permits, sec, bir, etc. during the time we registered our business. ang lalakas pa manghingi ng lagay ng mga taga city hall. pati printing of ORs and invoices, monopolized ng BIR dahil dapat daw authorized printers ang magpriprint.

SEC alone, took us three weeks to complete. kung hindi pa kami nagabot, di gagalaw. for business permits, daming prerequisites, kesyo daw may inspection of facilities, fire hazards, etc. even though we started on a virtual office. iba pa ang cost ng barangay clearance.

tapos during the end of 2008, we got assessed for taxes even though loss pa. san ka naman makakakita nun? lugi na, may tax pa.

again, we spent so much on the business permit renewal last week.

ang mahal din ng cost of electricity per kw/h, ang mahal ng tubig per cu/m. cost of labor is a bit high also, for a starting company.

tama kayo, the governement is not making things easier for investors/business people. they are more interested in collections and taxes. how can a businessman pay his taxes properly, kung starting pa lang eh, pahirapan na? and how can a businessman start his business with limited capital? may incentives, pero limited, more concentrated on foreign investors than local capitalists? and even though you are working on a PEZA or DTI accredited firm, daming reportorial requirements. (i know, because i used to work for one).

tapos upon tax collection, makikita mo and maririnig mo yung mga graft and corruption news, so alam na ng mga tao kung san napupunta ang pera nila.


sensya na... venting mode lang... walang mapaglabasan eh.