OPINION: Entrepreneurs can’t put all the blame on the government when a business fails

Starting a business takes courage, but keeping it alive requires an entirely different kind of commitment. An entrepreneur may have a promising idea and a product customers want, only to find that building a sustainable business is harder than getting it off the ground.

And sometimes, despite the owner’s best efforts, the numbers simply stop adding up.

It is always disheartening to see a business close, particularly a homegrown enterprise built by people who have put their savings, time, and hard work into making it work. We want to see more Filipino businesses grow, create jobs, and give consumers more locally made products to choose from. So when another entrepreneur calls it quits, the instinct to ask what went wrong is understandable.

It is equally understandable to point to the difficulties of doing business in the Philippines. Government policies and regulations can impose costs that smaller enterprises have little room to absorb. Red tape and requirements that seem unnecessarily burdensome deserve scrutiny, and government should be doing more to create an environment where businesses can operate and grow. There is certainly no shortage of things to criticize.

But government cannot automatically be held solely responsible whenever a business fails.

Gutierrez Oliver raised this point in the comments section of a radar story about NutriChews, the homegrown Filipino vitamin brand that recently announced its closure. Drawing from his family’s experience in business, he recalled how they started by selling clothes on the streets outside Baclaran Church and continued operating through years of political and economic uncertainty.

His observation was that surviving in business requires more than having a good product and finding customers. It also means navigating circumstances beyond one’s control and recognizing when something about the business needs to change.

That is an important part of entrepreneurship. A product may have a market, but that alone cannot guarantee a sustainable operation. Sometimes the pricing needs to be reconsidered. In other cases, the way a business sells or distributes its products may no longer be working. Owners must be willing to examine their own decisions and make adjustments rather than assume every problem comes from outside the business.

Of course, adaptability has its limits. No amount of resourcefulness can make excessive government burdens disappear. Smaller enterprises also have fewer resources to weather prolonged difficulties. Some owners may do everything reasonably possible and still run out of options.

But the reverse is also true. The survival of some businesses does not prove that the business environment is healthy, just as the closure of one does not automatically make government solely responsible.

We should want a country where starting and growing a business is less difficult. But we should also recognize that keeping one alive involves responsibilities that extend beyond government policy.

Both sides of that equation deserve attention.

That’s the point.