State of Philippine Economy: 2 Views
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I hope you guys are following the recent news in the Philippines. First, let me tell you this, the Philippine Census just released their research that 9 out of 10 Filipinos are employed.
Ok, now let’s see. I have here two opposing views of our economy. Let’s start with Gloria:
Economic surge amid pending polls proves critics wrong!Â
Â
MANILA, Philippines — President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on Thursday said the surge in investments in the first two months of the year has disproven claims that the economy was headed for a slowdown because of the May elections.
Arroyo said that in fact, investments doubled for January and February “when some doomsayers were expressing a lag due to the forthcoming elections.”
“The trend is now clear that political stability and democratic continuity is a given for the Philippines, and investors are putting their stake in our vision for the future,” she said in a statement.
“The trend can no longer be bucked, even by the din of political noise that has largely been bypassed by the investment community,” she added.
Arroyo said her administration was working hard “to clean up the mess of the past and forge ahead with integrity, excellence, and productivity.”
“We have crossed the sound barrier and have entered the frontier of peace, development, solidarity, and prosperity,” she said. Arroyo acknowledged the Filipinos working abroad for keeping the economy steady and growing.
Not enough jobs, wages!Â
INDEPENDENT think-tank IBON Foundation belies Malacañang’s claim of an improving economy, and asks why the palace does not dare to hype the economic figures that really matter to the majority of Filipinos.
According to IBON research head Sonny Africa, the economic numbers that can best illustrate the economy and that matter most to Filipinos are the rising jobless rate and deficient wage levels, and not macroeconomic indicators that the administration hypes such as rising stock markets, credit ratings, strengthening peso and the like.
Africa said that the biggest failure of the Arroyo government is the unprecedented lack of jobs, even amid so-called continued economic growth. According to IBON estimates, close to a third of the labor force is jobless or looking for additional work. Aggravating the jobs crisis is how legislated incomes chronically fall short of the amount needed for decent living, Africa added, pointing out that President Arroyo had vowed to veto the bill passed by the House and Senate granting an across-the-board P125 hike in workers’ pay. He said that the amount needed for a decent standard of living in the National Capital Region (NCR) has already reached P766 a day, just 46 percent of the daily legislated minimum wage, and a 50 percent increase from the P509 per day needed in 2001.
Compounding the problem further, Africa added, is that the real value of wages in Metro Manila has been falling since 2002. From a real value of P252.36 in 2002, the real value of daily wages in the NCR has fallen to just P239.28 as of November 2006.
Africa pointed out that the economic values most sensitive to “politicking†have little bearing on the people’s welfare. The short-term movements of exchange rates and portfolio flows that the government hype are meaningful mainly to speculators who gamble in financial instruments.
But the economic figures that the Arroyo government loves to proclaim as proof of its good economic stewardship are meaningless to the majority of Filipinos struggling to make ends meet, Africa said. -IBON Foundation
Popularity: 3% [?]
March 27th, 2007 at 12:48 am
They are both true…
the economy is getting better, yes…
BUT not enough to give a decent living to most…
[reply this comment]
March 27th, 2007 at 1:58 am
ECONOMY IMPROVING! Excuse me. I’m tired of hearing the sh-sh-ts occupying the Makalipong, baliw, walang credibilidad, na p-tang na tiyanak, unano at mga kampon ni Satanas.
When I went home to the Philipppines I saw actually the conditions of the Filipino people. Pakisabi nga Reyna Elena sa mga walang hiya na kurakot na mga ofisyales nitong magnanakaw na pekeng mukha na unano na lahat na mga magnanakaw na tauhan niya in one month tunira sila doon sa mga ilalim ng tulay, sa squatters area para maranasan nila an tunay nakahrapan.
When I came back my husband / friends where asking me about the situation in the Philippines, I bluntly told them, the situation is worst. I just pray everyday for the suffering people in the Philippines.
I have a very good suggestions of improving the economy of the Philippines. Lahat na mga magnanakaw, sinungaling, mandaraya sa gobyierno pumila sa Luneta and allow the people to tadiyak, sabunot, kurot, sulat (in pintura) sa katawan nila na magbabayad ang bawat ta-o hindi la Pilipino but allow also the foreigners to do it and I’m pretty sure everyday they’ll have an income in millions.
Pipilitin ko umuwi na sumali at masasama pa ako ng mga kaibigan so they can participate and raise the economy of the Philippines.
Why don’t Filipinos join together and BTK the lying, cheating, stealing unano, fatso , the whole family and his corrupt officials.
[reply this comment]
March 27th, 2007 at 2:29 am
^di ka naman galit nyan? hehe.
di lang naman gobyerno ang dapat sisihin.
dapt magsimula mismo sa sarili nila ang mga pinoy.
[reply this comment]
March 27th, 2007 at 2:35 am
Jeff,
Essentially, since I’ve lived in the US for many, many years, I am basically from the outside looking in. So, when I read all these rosy economic outlook from Wall Street, the New York Times, Businessweek and occasionally on the Philadelphia Inquirer, I get very excited. I did believed these news. Yet, for all these years…
- I couldn’t seem to reconcile the fact that millions and millions of Pinoys are still flying out of the country and join people like me toiling out here and everywhere, looking for the magic green buck and send them back to Flippines.
- I can’t reconcile the fact that our government became the biggest recruitment and placement agency in the world. Who cares if there aren’t any more doctors and nurses left and leave the caring to all quack doctors around? In fact, we’re the only government in the world that encourages ALL of the population to look for employment anywhere BUT the Flippines!
- I can’t seem to reconcile the fact that there are people in the highest office of the Flippine Government who trumpets their economics phd yet could not come up with a decent economic blueprint to propel our third world country to even be at par with Malaysia? or Thailand? Nope, I don’t even aspire Flippines to be a Singapore.
- I can’t seem to reconcile the fact that when I went home to the Flippines, all these economic growth created a mushrooming squatters right along floodway in Ortigas where most of my friends live, but then again, the more I travelled in the metropolis, extreme poverty is unbelievable!
- I can’t seem to reconcile the fact that the security guard we befriended at one of the classiest hotel in Ortigas told us that he’s going back to the province because he’s only earning Php8,000 a month and that’s not even enough for him to survive in Manila
- I can’t seem to reconcile the fact that to date, there is no decent expressway to our Bicol Republic but only a photo-op expressway that you see in Magallanes to Muntinglupa
Then you try to re-read the news again. Over and over just to make sure that either you read it wrong or that you were just hallucinating. I swear I wasn’t. Because I lived in Manila for 9 long months.
All these years, I worked so hard and as I read the news, I can’t in my imagination, believe that government officials earning Php35k or Php45k a month could accumulate billions of dollars (not pesos) by magic. Boy, did I fkin applied to a wrong employer! I never believe in re-incarnation but believe you me, Marcos came back with a vengeance!!!
[reply this comment]
March 27th, 2007 at 3:27 am
I was wrong…
I should have said:
“BUT NOT EVEN A HUNDREDTH FRACTION ENOUGH…”
You still can’t deny the fact that some things have improved…like corruption!
[reply this comment]
March 27th, 2007 at 8:09 am
I do believe that the economy is improving. Ofcourse we can not jump from 4 % GNP to 10%. The usual pattern would be from 4% to 6% then to 8% then 10%. At 10% people will feel it already. At this point we must atleast be happy that it is not going down. Last year, if my memory serves me right we had 5.8%. Critics will say, this is not felt by ordinary people. OFCOURSE, first to feel this are business owners, then later they will expand their business like Henry Sy of SM is doing right now. I heard they will put up a P6 Billion investment in Batangas, this will employ people whether we will like it or not. When this starts to happen, some people will have jobs and money to spend. Middle class with entreprenuer mind will see the opportunity when “masa” start buying basic needs. And the cycle will repeat itself because when we have more middle class, the upper class will again expand business.
At this point in time, we have to work together to push futher the economy up. To critisize is very easy, why not we just give suggestions on how we can contribute to the improvement of the economy. We can not compete with China or Vietnam in manufacturing simply because they have minimum wage very low compared to us. Vietnam have US$1.7 and we have US$7 per day, and you are still wondering why they are attracting more investment than us. Please abadon the belief that we can still beat them in this area. We must instead fight where we have more advantage, like “call centers”. We can attract more investment in this area if we can only keep peace and avoid political noise which does not help us in anyway. How about “Tourism”, we have also great advantage in this area simply because Philiippines is very beautiful place with very good climate. We have hospitable and english speaking people. We must help the government to sell the Philippines as a tourist destination. We can if only we must do this for the sake of our childrens. We are great nation..we have great people..WE CAN..
[reply this comment]
March 27th, 2007 at 11:16 am
Ang ganda naman ng explanation mo, Alex…smooth na smooth na sana ang aking pagbabasa…bigla sa bandang huli ako’y nadapa dahil sa dami naman ng ‘childrens’ na case in point mo…hehehe…natisod ang lola mo…
[reply this comment]
March 27th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Alex,
In a perfect world, that’s what supposed to happen. Big business gets a lot of dough and puts it back into the economy for more business. More business equals more employment. The government in return has that job to do. Spur the economy so more and more people goest into business, so more and more investments pours into the country. For the government to spur the economy,
- it has to offer tax incentives and example to these are the tax holidays and the export processing zones
- it has to provide a credible business climate such that investors will not have some aftershock that after an administration leaves, new set of rules are applied, are you familiar with what happened to the new airport terminal (set-aside the corruption), that was a perfect case of administrations changing their minds (again just set aside the corruption for the meantime)
- put a lid on government corruption so that investors can open their business without fear that government officials will milk them
- most important, build infrastructures. do we have them? not. you are in taiwan, compare the highway system. we don’t have what they have. ok, Taiwan might be too much. compare us with Thailand, where is Thailand’s infrastructure now?
There are obviously other things for the government to spur the economy but right now, you’d read the headlines - ALICIA MORALES ARROYO, read what she’s blurting out in the media.
What you’re reading are plain numbers. Plain numbers that does not filter down to the population because those people who are suppose to funnel down those monies back to the economy have those monies, the Pidals of the Philippines for one. That’s why the growth that you see ONLY REPRESENTS THE MONIES SENT BACK TO THE FLIPPINES BY ALL OF US, the OVERSEAS FILIPINO WORKERS. (It’s my next post… and also read this: http://reynaelena.com/?p=248).
Now, is this real growth?
[reply this comment]
March 27th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
c5, natawa naman ako sa post mo. hehe. ayos, may debate na dito. basa mode ako, parehas kasi may punto naman sila.
[reply this comment]
March 27th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
@ghandee
hehehe…kasi po pag alam kong ang intention ng writer/poster/commenter eh straight english, nag-o-on ang proof-reader-mode ko, kasama grammar syempre
[reply this comment]
March 27th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
@ghandee
pag si Reyna nag straight english at may mali, di ko na pinapansin…eh kanya tong site na toh noh…paki ko dun?
[reply this comment]
March 28th, 2007 at 12:12 am
c5, haha. di ok nga rin napansin yun childrens na yun kung di mo nabanggit sa post mo. haha.
ay oo naman! pag si mahal na reyna ang nagkamali eh tiklop tayo, di pwede umangal at baka machugi tayo sa kaharian. hahaha.
[reply this comment]
March 28th, 2007 at 2:51 am
c5, actually nakita ko na yun later kaso nasend ko na eh..but i will admit medyo mahina tayo sa english kase di naman po english ang major ko..graduate po ako ng engineering pero alam ko rin na mali po yun..anyway, that is besides the topic..
kaw c5, what is your suggetion on how we can improve our country?
[reply this comment]
March 28th, 2007 at 3:14 am
Alex, thanks for coming back! Kumusta ka na dyan sa Taiwan! Wag mong pansinin yong mga diwata kong nag-ga-grammar check, bangag lang ang mga yan! He He He Siempre when you write raw, expect wrong spelling, wrong grammar, eh basta yong thought andun, tapos! Sabi nga ni Kris Aquino - ME TAMAAA KAAA!!! he he he
[reply this comment]
March 28th, 2007 at 3:26 am
^kamahalan, sya ba yun alex na sinasabi mong nawawala mong junakis dito sa iyong kingdom? yun sabi mong baka naging presidente ng taiwan?
kung ganon eh, welcum back! balakubak! hehehe. wag ka nang mawawala ha? namimiss ka ng reyna.
[reply this comment]
March 28th, 2007 at 3:30 am
Again, to emphasize my point. I believe we our improving, but i believe also it is not yet felt by ordinary ” masa” at this point. As per DBP assesment we need to be at 8% growth to have effect on poverty reduction. But as i’ve said before, we can not simply jump from 4% to 10%. Last year we have 5.4%, atleast i can say we are inching up. Maybe if we pull out our effort on how we can help to market our country as a tourist destination then may be we can have 6 ~7% next year. Tourism is one industry where we have great potential and can provide jobs for our people. Do not expect the government to do everything for us. I am in Taiwan, the accusation of corruption and politics here is much worse than in the philippines. Here you can see minister slapping the face of another minister or trowing shoes to one another during their debate on national television yet people don’t care so much. People continue to do business. People here are generally slow learner compared to us and most of them can not speak english at all.But they have enterprenuer mind that is not unusual to see houses here with small factory. Very small companies are listed in their stock exchange and common people know how to play stocks. Even the security guard in my company watch stock on TV while doing his work. People, common people, our collective effort will save our country. Not a single president or senators…WE..the people…
[reply this comment]
March 28th, 2007 at 4:10 am
Hi reyna,
I am still ok here in the land of singkit at mapuputla. Ok lang yun comment sila sa english ko anyway gusto ko pa ri naman matuto. Actually i can speak chinese and japanese, and i am still studying other language. Also, im not here to debate but to give my insight and hope for our country, that we can still make it. Kase as far as iam concern, pinoy ako 100% at gusto ko pagtanda ko sa pinas pa rin ako.
Goodluck sa iyo at more power sa blog mo..
Chao..
[reply this comment]
March 28th, 2007 at 8:13 am
hi to everybody!!!just reading everybody’s opinions…by the way, are you the alex yalung from plm, class of 80 or 81?
[reply this comment]
March 28th, 2007 at 9:23 am
Alex…oo na, sige na hindi ko na papansinin…kasi dami ko nanamang papansinin pag ganon eh matitisod lang ako ng matitisod…pero being an engineering grad ONLY (as you put it) is not a reason not to learn English well, which used to be a universal language…pinoy tayo, the more na dapat magaling tayong mga linguists…tayo ang nag-a-adapt sa ibang languages pati diction and intonation nagagaya. Buti nga nakapag-college ka pa eh…ako high school lang tinapos ko.
Pero anyway, back to your question, what can I suggest? It all boils down to the morality. Kung lahat ng tao matino, according to God’s standards, walang magnanakaw, sinungaling, at may pagmamahal sa Lumikha at sa kapwa tao, STARTING FROM EACH OWN’S IMMEDIATE FAMILY…hindi ba titino ang lahat? That could be a big dream…but it will happen…not just soon enough…but not farfetched either…
So I’m starting with myself and my own family…
[reply this comment]
March 29th, 2007 at 5:55 am
C5, binasa ko ulit yung post ko di ko makita yung “ONLY” dun sa engineering graduate. I mean hindi ako kagalingan sa english pero it does mean na hanggang dun na lang .na ginagawang reason yun para di pa mas matuto. If it is about mathematics or electronics na major ko mas may expertise ako. English is not my expertise so pardon me kapag may mali ako, but i keep on learning. Yes, also other languages. I can speak and read Chinese and I can understand basic Japanese.
Dun naman sa suggestion mo na morality. ofcourse, given na kapag sinunod natin ang kalooban ng DIYOS eh titino ang bansa natin.Nun pa yan pinapangaral sa pulpito..panahaon pa ng kastila..
[reply this comment]
March 29th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Alex,
Buti naman you’re beginning to be a regular. Mabuti yan that you speak Chinese, that will be the new English pretty soon. Sa totoo lang, you are way ahead of the curve na! Wag mong pansinin yong grammar check ni Ceefive! Ha Ha Ha! Ganyan lang yan pag nakainom yan! Pinag-iinitan ang mga inglish words! He He hE
[reply this comment]
March 29th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Yong tipong librarian ba na pag nag-ingay ka sa library eh pipitikin ka? Ha Ha Ha
[reply this comment]
March 29th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
aLEX, patulugin mo na ang grammar…sige na, di kita patulan
lashing lang ako non gaya ng sabi ng Reyna… (pano pa kaya kung di lashing?) hehehe
Agree ako, mabuti dami mong alam na languages…gusto ko yan…sa sobrang idealist ko noon dami kong biniling books to learn different languages…gusto ko books lang…wala kasing pang-tuition eh…kaya lang pag walang focus, wala talagang mangyayari…pare-pareho silang hanggang kung saan lang…i even tried kanji para kako, pag nakita ko mga characters eh malaman ko kung ano sinasabi…yoko nga mapunta sa CR ng mga boys noh!
So magaling ka sa math at electronics, I presume…
How many times can you subtract 1 from 25 without going below zero?
[reply this comment]
March 29th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
hala. naghahamon na si c5. hehehe.
alex, papano ba matuto ng chinese language na masyadong nahihirapan? ako 2003 pa lang nag-aaral na ko (self study), pero ilan pa lang ang natutunan ko talaga. ang hirap kasi eh. tapos minsan yun amo ko, english naman salita ko kung bakit mandarin sya pag sumasagot, minumura nya kaya ako?
pero hinde kasi lam ko naman yun mga words sa kanila pag nagmmura sila. haha. (yun ang pinakauna kong natutunan eh)
[reply this comment]
November 27th, 2007 at 12:44 am
okay lang naman kahit medyo sablay sa grammar, ang mahalaga yung nilalaman… nice opinions guys. ^_^
[reply this comment]
November 27th, 2007 at 12:49 am
Ngapala, sabi nila, economic growth is different from economic development. =b
[reply this comment]
March 4th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
gOOOsshh…alex yaLung..
great!…dats oL.
[reply this comment]
March 4th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
to>>> ALeX,…tWo tHumBs Up!!! for you poh.
[reply this comment]