By Alexandria Grace C. Magno, Reporter
AYALA CORP. (AC) is looking to expand its partnerships with local government units (LGUs) to bring its social infrastructure initiatives closer to communities and support long-term development.
AC Managing Director and Chief Social Infrastructure Officer Paolo F. Borromeo said the Ayala group is aiming to leverage its experience in healthcare, education, community development and sustainability through a unified platform that strengthens collaboration with national and local governments, as well as other organizations.
“We were trying to address how we can continue to be or be even more relevant to the stakeholders and the communities that we serve and be even better partners with different stakeholders,” he told BusinessWorld Editor-in-Chief Cathy Rose A. Garcia as part of BusinessWorld One-on-One’s online interview series.
The Ayala group recently established a social infrastructure unit to coordinate its programs and maximize synergies across its businesses and initiatives.
These efforts are consolidated under Alagang Ayala, which Mr. Borromeo said was created to make the group’s social infrastructure work more accessible and easier to understand.
“[S]ocial infrastructure is a very business-like term for us. We needed to make it easier to understand. And so, to us, everything that we do around social infrastructure and the work that we do for the country is really under the umbrella of Alagang Ayala,” he said.
Mr. Borromeo said the company is open to working with different LGUs, particularly those that consider healthcare, education, livelihood and sustainability as their priorities. But he noted that AC’s ability to help depends partly on whether it has an existing presence in the area and whether its capabilities align with the local government’s needs.
“[S]o if that’s a top priority agenda for certain LGUs, that we’re more than happy to assist and to the extent that we can because we don’t also pretend that we can help everybody,” Mr. Borromeo said.
“There are places where we may not have a presence that would be difficult for us to provide support. But where we can, and where there is a meeting of the minds — of course, we offer our support to help,” he added.
The company’s approach to social infrastructure extends beyond charitable assistance, with some initiatives taking the form of financially sustainable public-private partnerships (PPPs) that draw on AC’s commercial healthcare and education businesses, Mr. Borromeo said.
He said healthcare and education PPPs require a different approach from infrastructure projects such as toll roads and airports.
In these sectors, the objective is not simply to build facilities but also to make services accessible and affordable for patients and students.
“In health and education, you hope to reduce the payment of the patient or the student,” Mr. Borromeo said, noting that partnerships must also account for Philippine Health Insurance Corp.’s (PhilHealth) role in healthcare financing.
“So, you have to be more innovative about public-private partnerships in health and manage the risk-reward balance between the government and the private,” he added.
Among AC’s healthcare initiatives, Mr. Borromeo cited its partnership with the Valenzuela City government for the operation and management of an ambulatory surgical center and dialysis facilities. He said the group is also working with the province of Iloilo to expand dialysis services in district hospitals.
In March, Ayala’s AC Health and the Iloilo provincial government launched a dialysis project that will establish 13 centers across the province’s 12 district hospitals and provincial hospitals to expand access to kidney care.
Mr. Borromeo said other collaborations with LGUs involve pharmacy management and the delivery of the PhilHealth GAMOT (Guaranteed Access to Medicines and Outpatient Treatment) program.
AC has a healthcare subsidiary, AC Health, whose portfolio includes generic drugstore chain Generika Drugstore; pharmaceutical importers and distributors IE Medica and MedEthix; Healthway Medical Network, which operates multispecialty clinics, ambulatory centers and full-service hospitals; and retail pharmacy chain St. Joseph Drug.
Meanwhile, in education, Ayala Foundation continues with its flagship program, CENTEX (Center of Excellence in Public Elementary Education), which seeks to train public school teachers and improve school facilities, including learning laboratories.
The program also provides teachers and students with learning tools and technology, with improvements in mathematics scores reported in its early results, Mr. Borromeo said.
AC is also piloting the initiative in Zambales, with plans to expand it to other areas. It also runs CENTEX initiatives in Mindanao and continues to work with the Department of Education on other programs, he added.
Beyond healthcare and education, AC also supports livelihood and community development programs in Palawan and Mindoro that aim to create jobs for microentrepreneurs and low-income earners.
Mr. Borromeo said the broader goal is to make Ayala a more effective partner in addressing community needs while ensuring that its initiatives create measurable and lasting benefits.
“We’re big believers that not everything should be dole outs,” he said. “Doing good should be part and parcel of how you do business.”
Watch the full BusinessWorld One-on-One interview with Ayala Corp. Chief Social Infrastructure Officer Paolo Borromeo at 11 a.m., Oct. 14 on Facebook via BusinessWorld (@BWorldPH) and The Philippine Star (@PhilippineStar) and on YouTube (@BusinessWorldTV).