Most Philippine Businesses Unaware of Business Continuity Planning (BCP)

The Philippines ranked 4^th among member countries of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) region to have little awareness in Business Continuity, the Asian Disaster Reduction Center reported.

In the study involving respondents belonging to the Makati Business Club and the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, only a quarter of all SMEs and large-scale companies in the country have written Business Continuity Plan (BCP), while almost half do not even know the concept.

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With more than half of the large-scale companies from the 13 member countries having BCPs, financial and insurance businesses have the most number of existing plans while agriculture, forestry and fishery industries collectively scored the lowest.

Threats most commonly addressed in Business Continuity Plans are earthquake, fire and pandemic/epidemic while insect infestation, nuclear and drought concerns fell at the bottom of the list.

In the Philippines where 65% of companies have no BCPs, the low availability of necessary contingency and disaster recovery plans does not match the consistent appearance of the country among those most hit by natural calamities in the world within the last half decade.

For 2011 alone, the country claimed more than 10% of all natural disasters in the world, with 33 considered as major incidents, leaving 12.5% of the population affected and P26 billion in economic damages.

In a separate report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the country also ranked 6^th among those most vulnerable to climate change, thus, declared as one of the most vulnerable to natural hazards.

To address the lacking business continuity awareness within the local business sector, the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) sponsored a roundtable discussion held at the Ateneo de Manila University with more than a hundred participants.

A study by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and Pacific Strategy Agency (PSA) revealed that it’s too early for the country to handle an earthquake at the scale of 7.2 magnitude which may hit Metro Manila through the West Valley Fault line. ###