From micro to massive, ASEAN’s entrepreneurs face regulatory hurdles

MANILA, Philippines – A food vendor at a weekend bazaar might have little in common with a conglomerate investing across Southeast Asia, yet both can find themselves grappling with regulations that make growing their business harder than it should be.

For Go Negosyo founder Joey Concepcion, governments should give microentrepreneurs some wiggle room, particularly when they are just starting out.

Speaking on the sidelines of the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit on Saturday, November 14, Concepcion recalled how he began his own entrepreneurial journey.

“When I started as an entrepreneur, I didn’t apply for any permit,” he said, also pointing out that many successful food vendors at bazaars sometimes sell products without certificates of product registration.

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Concepcion knows a thing or two about building a business. He heads RFM Corporation, which is behind the Selecta ice cream Filipinos love, while his family’s other business, Concepcion Industrial, makes the Condura refrigerators that keep it cold. Through Go Negosyo, he has also spent years helping fledgling entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground.

“If I were the government, I’d just let it go for now and allow them to continue. And eventually, they will gradually follow the rules,” he said. “It cannot be too strict in the process though.”

Beyond permits, Concepcion said small entrepreneurs also struggle with financing and developing better products. This is where mentorship becomes important, particularly in helping businesses become viable enough to qualify for bank loans.

Larger businesses also have a stake in their success. After all, Concepcion noted, sari-sari stores are important outlets for products sold by major manufacturers.

“Because if they close shop, then our sales obviously will also go down,” he said.

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The difficulty of navigating regulations does not disappear as businesses grow; it only changes. Across ASEAN, even its most successful businessmen still grapple with differing national standards, investment approvals, and employment requirements.

Ayala Corporation chairman Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala said these differences complicate efforts to expand across the region, despite the complementary strengths of Southeast Asian economies.

“There’s still a lot that needs to be done,” he said during a separate panel. “How we would like as a company to be able to move within these different countries in a much easier way, but the standards that we have, the approval standards, the way to get your investment filed, it’s different in each of these countries.”

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Malaysian banker Nazir Razak, former CIMB Group chairman, had stronger words for ASEAN’s slow progress toward economic integration.

“It’s incredibly frustrating that even the simplest of ideas seem to have a lot of difficulty getting implemented,” he said.

Nazir recalled how CIMB expanded across Southeast Asia in anticipation of the ASEAN Economic Community, launched in 2015 to great fanfare and with the ambition of establishing a single market and production base.

“I felt we were all dressed up with nowhere to go,” he said.

ASEAN has nevertheless continued attracting investment. Foreign direct investment rose 10% to a record $246 billion in 2025, according to the ASEAN Investment Report 2026. Investment originating within the regional bloc also grew 34% to $40 billion, accounting for 16% of total inflows.

Still, Nazir feels that ASEAN has plenty more unlocked economic potential, but its leadership structure could be holding it back. He criticized how much of the authority rests with the chair, which changes every year, rather than the secretary-general, who serves a five-year term. He argued that the arrangement needed reform to help the bloc move faster.

“So you imagine a company where all power is with the chairman, but the chairman changes every year. That would be completely dysfunctional,” he said.

The Philippines is set to hand over ASEAN’s rotating chairmanship to Singapore for 2027. – Rappler.com