Amazing disgrace

Perhaps the Aquino (Part II) administration could still do something magnificently good for the economy on its last year, but only if it would not be too much to ask of our leader Benigno Simeon, aka BS.

Many times, the business sector expressed its big disappointment over the way this administration had handled various aspects of the economy in the past five years—such as its complete disregard for our urgent need for infrastructure.

Yet our dear leader, BS, seemingly oblivious to all the problems facing the business sector, just went on his merry way of trumpeting his administration as the best thing that ever happened to this country in terms of economic management.

The fact remained, for instance, that the economy lost its footing in the first quarter of 2015, with the Gross Domestic Product growing by only 5.2 percent—a distressing growth rate indeed, compared to the 6.6-percent rate in the last quarter of 2014.

But our dear leader, BS, just could not help himself, still boasting that this country, under his marvelous leadership, stepped up from being the terminal case in Asia to the best performing economy in the entire known universe in science fiction.

Anyway, based on the economic gospel according to his boys in the Palace, the next leader thus would have to be somebody handpicked by our dear leader, BS, so that the next administration would continue to perform amazing miracles for the economy.

Since when did miraculous powers become transferrable? Just how his boys in the Palace arrived at such a grotesque claim, would probably endure as the biggest joke for many generations to come.

The first quarter GDP result was a bad sign, period.

The stock market saw it coming, as shown by the 8-percent slide in the PSE index from its peak. In business, they believed that if only the Aquino (Part II) administration did not sleep on the job, the economy would have likely hit growth rates of between 8 and 10 percent a year.

And, unlike the Palace boys, economic research groups in the private sector dug up the official figures to support their claim. For instance, government spending only accounted for 0.2 percentage point of the 6.1 percent GDP growth rate in 2014.

Look at that, mga bossing ko: In effect, if only the Aquino (Part II) administration did its job, and it pursued the projects in the 2014 GAA (General Appropriations Act), the economy could have posted a higher growth rate.

Remember: We were still a country in a hurry to reduce our high unemployment rate, which continued to go up under our dear leader, BS, and ease our poverty incidence, which was also growing despite his P60-billion CCT dole-out program.

The biggest reason behind the economic slippage in the first quarter of 2015 was what the private sector called “under-spending” by the government, meaning, the administration forgot to pursue those projects in the 2015 budget.

Even Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balicasan singled out “public construction” as the biggest culprit behind the “under-spending,” which of course was the lookout of Public Works and Highways Secretary Rogelio Singson, who by the way tried to salvage his reputation in the DPWH press statements, by highlighting the “savings” in government construction projects, instead of his failure to perform.

Private research groups already calculated that “underspending” by the Aquino (Part II) administration in the past five years could amount to P300 billion—easily —and still counting, the real reason why the illegal unconstitutional DAP came about, in the first place.

That “underspending” was in fact one big issue in the recent Euromoney investment conference here. Top executives even shelled out good money just to hear our dear leader, BS, talk about his possible solution to the problem.

And did he offer the forum any solution? Well, er, ah, actually, he boasted about how he cured this country from being the sick man of Asia to becoming one of the best performing economies in the region.

You know—the same exact spin peddled by the Palace boys regarding his tremendous endorsement power in the forthcoming presidential elections!

Still, even with one year remaining in this delusional administration, all the influential business organizations in the country rallied behind a list of urgent government actions that they presented to our dear leader, BS.

Among them was the need for infrastructure, particularly in transportation. Even the international credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s already warned us that we would have to pursue transportation infrastructure, or else …

The last two-minutes shopping list of the business sector also sought government action to cut bureaucratic “red tape,” which despite all the “matuwid na daan” spin of this administration, remained one of the biggest objects of corruption.

That was evident in the World Bank yearly study, called “Ease Of Doing Business Index, covering some 189 countries, in which the Philippines placed 108th in the 2015 edition.

If you would care to look at the items in the index, we should be worse than the 108th position. For instance, in the sub-item “Starting a Business,” we were at No 161, or in the sub-item “Getting Construction Permit,” we were at the 124th place.

To think, mga bossing ko, we enjoyed a construction boom in the past several years. Just imagine how much more projects could be started in, say, low cost housing, if only our government somehow could cut the red tapes in construction permits.

To top it all, those 18 business organizations zeroed in on “smuggling” as still one of their biggest problems. While the government could forego hundreds of billions in taxes, smuggling could also lead to mass slaughter of local businesses.

In the past five years, no wonder, the term “bayawak” became a password of sort in the Bureau of Customs.

The wonder of it all was that, in 2010, at the start of the Aquino (Part II) administration, the business sector already presented those same concerns to our dear leader, BS, albeit in the form of a much longer wish list.

Five years later, still under this miracle performing administration, the business sector would pine for government action regarding those exact same problems.

It must be a complete disgrace to this amazing administration that nothing much really happened. But then again…