By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
There was a breakfast reunion I was supposed to attend at Pilando Center along Magsaysay Ave. but it turned out we did not communicate well. So it was rescheduled for the next day. My next appointment then was with an alternative medicine practitioner about 100 meters down the road. Or just above Baguio’s Slaughter House.
About 50 meters away from the Pilando Center is “Pandesalan 24/7”. Yes, they are open 24/7. Along with the pandesal, they are also selling peanut butter. Great idea even if it was not their original concept.
If you remember, about two decades ago, there were 24/7 pandesalan all over Metro Manila. If I remember right those stores were called “Pugon” (the tagalog or Ilocano term for a wooden fueled oven). Some tinge of aroma of the wood gets into the pandesal which contributes to its unique taste.
There was such a store in a mall in Baguio which was done in a better way. They also sold peanut butter or blue berry or strawberry jams or butter in small plastic containers good for just one or two people. These came with plastic spoons to scoop the butter with and spread it between the pandesal halved by your hand. YUMMY especially if it went with freshly brewed coffee or any other hot drink. Sadly, those stores are no more. The revenues might not be enough to sustain their survival.
Look around and there are so many other businesses you can put up anywhere. For instance, one can readily put up a banana cue or “fishbol” stands on the side of the road. You just have to pay “rent” or “lagay” to the Barangay Captain. This is one advantage of being in a backward or third world country. All you need is some creativity or entrepreneurial spirit. The possibilities can be endless.
How to finance such small businesses? There are so many ways but I would like to deal only with our idea of cooperatives. As I learned in the socio-economic ideology of the Ananda Marga yoga group, cooperatives are one way of democratizing wealth or attaining an equitable distribution of economic opportunities. Such is the power of the maximum utilization of pooled economic resources.
Many of the successful cooperatives around which helped so many people become economically independent are church based. Quite a number of these have become billionaires in terms of assets.
Ironically, many of these cooperatives, particularly the credit coops, belie their supposed Christian origins. They charge relatively high interest rates even if loans are fully secured by the mortgage of titled prime real estate properties.
How much interest rate is Christian? If I remember right, there was a Supreme Court decision to the effect that an interest of more than one percent a month was deemed unconscionable.
So many money lenders, however, say ‘there are so many ways of skinning a cat.” They devise ways of circumventing that ruling. Some add on so many other charges. Others who are even more un-Christian add on paper the unconscionable interest to make it appear it is part of the borrowed amount.
I personally know one who was doing that and she died due to an incurable disease. And it happened after the break-up of her family.
Well, everybody gets his or her just deserts.
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