An Ilonggo reason to laud a billionaire

By Herbert Vego

TO billionaire Enrique K. Razon Jr., 61, the COVID-19 pandemic is just another problem to get over with, and from which to spring up anew.

That’s good news for us in the city and province of Iloilo because we are looking forward to benefiting from his future business expansion here.

To us Iloilo City residents, Razon — named by Forbes magazine as the third richest man in the Philippines with a net worth of US $5.8 billion — has become “synonymous” to “power” for being chairman of MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power).

There could have been more to that had the coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19) not intervened. He might already have implemented plans aimed at industrializing Iloilo.

On the day he was last seen in Iloilo City two years ago (June 28, 2019), Razon briefly discussed with Mayor Jerry Treñas and Congresswoman Julienne “Jam-jam” Baronda his desire to help Iloilo soar in business, industry and tourism.

When we asked Baronda to refresh us with details of that close encounter, she said, “Not much, because the occasion did not call for that. He only assured us of his eagerness to be an instrument of Iloilo’s further boom.  He had already expressed his intention to invest in the expansion of the Iloilo International Port and Dumangas Port to accommodate overseas vessels.”

Roel Z. Castro, president of MORE Power, spoke of that day when he accompanied Razon in cruising around the city streets, ending up for lunch in an eatery patronized by the plain folk.

That he is at home with ordinary workers is not surprising because there are more of them in his flagship company, the International Container Terminal Services, Inc. (ICTSI). It is in the business of cargo handling using automated harbor equipment to facilitate automated loading and unloading of incoming and outgoing cargoes at cheaper cost, since the importers and exporters would no longer have to transship via the ports of Cebu or Manila.

ICTSI is not “international” for nothing. Aside from nine ports in the Philippines (Manila, Subic, Batangas, Davao City and General Santos City, among others). ICTSI also operates in Indonesia, Pakistan, Australia, New Guinea, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, Honduras, Poland, Georgia, Croatia, Madagascar, Nigeria, Congo and Iraq.

Ricky Razon, in a video recording done by Forbes, attributed to his paternal grandfather the humble origin of the business in 1916.

It had already been taken over by his father, Enrique M. Razon, when World War II erupted in 1939. The company had to re-start from scratch.

In 1987 at the age of 27, the younger Ricky – a Business Administration graduate from De La Salle University – assumed control of the business which won the bidding to handle automated port services at the Manila International Container Terminal (MICT). That achievement earned him the moniker “ports king”.

In 2010, he invested US $200 million in an unfamiliar, entertainment venture — the Bloomberry Resorts and Hotels, beginning with the Solaire Hotel & Casino in Metro Manila.

For all that trailblazing feat, the DLSU honored him with an honorary degree of Doctor of Science in Logistics in 2019.

In June 2020, he sank an initial investment of 10.7 billion pesos ($224.4 million) in the beleaguered water utility, the Manila Water. He is now its chairman.

Razon has since then also bought millions of pesos worth of shares of stocks in a dozen or more Philippine corporations, where he sits as either chairman or member of the board of directors.

“I take risk,” he said. “I may lose but I recover my losses from earnings of my other ventures.”

As to how the pandemic had devastated his business, Razon opted to project the lighter side, saying, “I always expect to wake up to another crisis, I always prepare for that. We don’t let that hinder our aggressiveness.”