Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wants strong collaboration with the Philippines to make it easier for Canadian infrastructure builders to secure projects in the country as well as help Filipino micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) grow their business.

Trudeau raised the issue with President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. on Sunday during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summits in Phnom Penh.

“There’s a number of things that we can do to make it easier for Canadian investors to be building in the Philippines. We should make sure we’re accelerating our works so that we can be much more active partners on that,” Trudeau told President Marcos.

“And there’s also a lot that we can do on small and medium size businesses, particularly women-owned and run, which is an area of tremendous growth and strength in the Philippine economy to see women succeed,” Trudeau pointed out.

According to the Canadian leader, his country has a number of programs and Canada would be happy to work with the Philippines for the benefit of the economy.

President Marcos welcomed Trudeau’s offer, stressing one of the thrusts of his administration is to assist MSMEs in recovering from the pandemic, as many of them lost steam in the past years.

“They are 99.8 percent of our businesses, our MSMEs. They are 62, 63 percent of our employment. [They] are employed in MSMEs. And it took a big hit in the pandemic,” Marcos said.

“And so that’s what we’ve been trying to do — is to try to support them, and it has a very large multiplier effect,” the chief executive added. | PND