Manila: The Philippine government hopes to attract the best minds and most qualified workers and provide civil servants with pay at par with those provided by employment in the private sector.

"This country's progress relies heavily on those working for its government; and the government has to be able to attract—and reward—the greatest minds in this country. This is why I have taken the first steps towards more competitive compensation and rewards for the 1.6 million people in our bureaucracy," President Benigno Aquino III said in a speech.

Aquino was speaking during the 20th anniversary of the Association of Young Filipino Chinese Entrepreneurs (AYFCE) in Makati City on Friday evening.

Unlike in other countries, developed or otherwise, employment in the government sector has been largely looked down in the country.

Government offices have largely been derided for their inefficiency and to certain extent, as backwaters where corruption and slackness thrive.

Aquino said that his administration wants to put an end to such perception.

He said the government is working on a management system for the public sector to get the most qualified workers and at the same time make the government sector at par with the private sector with regard to granting incentives.

"In December of 2011, I signed Administrative Order 25, which created an inter-agency task force to propose, among others, a results-based performance management system, which will be used to determine incentives for government workers based on their individual collective performance," the Philippine president said.

"Under the leadership of the Department of Budget and Management, the Department of Finance, and the other agencies in this task force, they have been working on a proposal which, obviously, needs a lot of study," he said.

Aquino said that when he was a member of Congress he filed a bill requiring companies to share 10 per cent of their profits with their workers. The idea is to satisfy the interests of both the management and the workers, he said, adding that as Chief Executive he has to work to instill this idea in the bureaucracy.

He also noted that at the entry level, workers in both the public and private sectors have competitive salaries. But as government employees rise through the ranks, their salaries begin to pale in comparison to those for equivalent positions in the private sector, he said.