Thieve jobs

The Aquino (Part II) administration must have a battalion of secret admirers. Every now and then newsmen like myself receive a barrage of text messages. The message senders seem to always forget to reveal their identities.

Still, the messages invariably pointed us to some reports in cyberspace that extolled the Philippine economy. Examples included reports on its amazing growth rate and those on the credit rating upgrade given by foreign agencies for the country.

The implication of the massive text blasts about the “good news” on the Philippine economy surely was that the Aquino (Part II) administration must have done a pretty amazing job in managing the economy. Sure, boss!

According to one recent text message, which many other newsmen apparently received at the same time, the boys of our leader Benigno Simeon (a.k.a. BS) already set their economic growth target at between 7 percent and 8 percent this year.

That should be the highest growth rate to be recorded by the economy under the Aquino (Part II) administration, which started with pathetic record in managing the economy.

On the first full year of the administration in 2011, here was the report that came out in this section: The Philippine economy, as measured by the gross domestic product (GDP), expanded 3.7 percent in 2011, less than half the 7.6-percent growth rate posted in 2010.

Thus, the targeted growth rate of 7 to 8 percent for 2015, in any language, should impress jaded newsmen like myself—even for an impoverish country where almost 30 percent of the population try to make do on less than $1 a day.

And so it seemed that the secret admirers of the Palace could not help but crow about the rosy forecast given out by the economic managers of our dear leader, BS.

However, another institution, this time the world renowned Asian Development Bank, figured that the Philippine economic growth rate in 2015 would likely be less than 7 percent.

To top it all, the ADB report indicated that the Philippine government— i.e. the Aquino (Part II) administration—would be hard pressed to create more jobs, saying that job creation was our “biggest challenge.”

The reports figured that some 3 million Filipinos were still jobless based on the latest census done in 2013, while some 7 million were underemployed —meaning, those poor people might be working but were not getting paid.

Studies done by private sector think-tanks would show that, in the past several years, the Philippines had the highest unemployment rate among the original members of Asean, namely, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

Our poor record in job creation could only be the leading cause of the high incidence of poverty, although the much neglected education system would not be far down in the blame ladder.

Official figures showed that in the Asean, the Philippines had the highest proportion of children out of school at more than 11 percent, and we all knew that, in a highly competitive labor pool, poor education would always mean no job.

Job creation therefore, at least according to the ADB report, should be the priority of the Aquino (Part II) administration this year, if only to help reduce the incidence of poverty in the country—and thus human sufferings.

According to the Unicef, more than 32 percent of Filipino children under age of 5 were deemed as “malnourished.”

Of course the Aquino (Part II) administration tried to help the “poor” through its CCT program, or the conditional cash transfer, patterned after the highly political system in South America, increasing the budget for the program from a few hundred million pesos in 2010 to tens upon tens of billions of pesos by 2015.

Never mind that the Commission on Audit already reported billions of pesos in leakages in the CCT program as administered by the DSWD. Apparently, some thieves in the administration thought that part of their job was to steal a lot of money from the CCT program.

But the Palace said—ah basta—the CCT program helped the “poor,” not to mention the political allies of the Aquino (Part II) administration.

Anyway, the big question therefore should be asked: If the Philippine economy showed high growth rates, which were the “accomplishment” that the secret admirers of our leader, BS, never failed to ram down our throats, why did the unemployment rate continue to rise?

The ADB report noted that, based on the latest labor force survey (LFS), the jobless rate was 7.5 percent in January 2014, which increased from 7.1 percent a year earlier and—worst of all —from 6.5 percent in October 2013.

In the private sector, they figured out that the Philippine economy in the past couple of years showed high growth rates mainly due to consumer spending, fueled by the remittances of OFWs and the income from BPOs.

In other words, our economic growth did not come from the most important of all economic stimulants: None other than direct investments. In particular, since by definition as a developing country we have a shortage of capital, the more important stimulus should come from the so-called FDI, or foreign direct investments.

As we reported in this section, the Philippines had the lowest FDIs in Asean, with only $4 billion in 2013, for instance, versus $60 billion in Singapore, $18 billion in Indonesia, $13 billion in Thailand, and $12 billion in Malaysia.

One of the boys of our leader BS had a fantastic explanation for our poor showing in attracting FDIs, and that was, well, the Philippine economy was a bit late in showing signs of steady growth, compared to our Asean neighbors which have consistently posted high growth rates in the past 20 years or so.

Really? And everybody thought that the consistent growth rates could only come from the entry of more FDIs into the country. For if the economy kept on growing by leaps and bounds, it would have little need for FDIs, would it?

The truth was that the high FDIs actually stimulated the economic growth rates in those Asean countries, period.

Apparently, that was the kind of economic thinking that our leader, BS, got from his boys.

Anyway, we would likely wait for eternity before our government could realize that to attract more investments, it would have to embark on a massive infrastructure program.

If it would not be too much to ask, the government might also try to cut all those bureaucratic “red tapes” that stymied investments—big and small.

The ADB reports suggested that the government should do well by promoting agriculture based industries to help increase income in the countryside, where the incidence of poverty was highest.

I have bad news for you: Massive job losses in the sugar industry.

According to the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA), the implementation of the Asean “integration” would imperil the livelihood of about 60,000 sugar farmers and 600,000 sugar workers in the country.

Nobody should expect those poor people to find employment abroad as OFWs. Not even the secret admirers of our leader, BS, who were busy blasting propaganda text messages no end.