Category: The Economy

by Cong B. Corrales

HAVE YOU FELT IT? Are you better off today than in the past years?

“Unsa man ni nga tuwid nga daan? Nga batsi man diay kaayo (What kind of a righteous path is this? It is so full of potholes),” Lourderico Pedimonte, 37 years old and a father of three lamented in a phone interview, Wednesday, when asked if he felt any improvement in his income because of the the country’s supposed unprecedented economic growth.

Pedimonte, who lives in Barangay Consolacion, Cagayan de Oro City in Mindanao, has been a tricycle driver for eight years. From 7:00am to 6:00pm, Pedimonte said his tricycle consumes five liters of premium gasoline, which currently costs P57.10 a liter. His daily rental or “boundary” is P230.

“Even with the increase of the regular fare to P7.00, its still hard to catch up so I could bring home a less than decent earning for the day,” Pedimonte pined in the dialect. “We should–in our own ways–make government hear our demands,” he added.

Here in Metro Manila, Lina Mendoza of Scout De Guia St., Quezon City said she has not felt the economic growth that the national government has been bannering in the news.

“Hirap na hirap pa rin kami (We are still in dire straits),” Mendoza—an ambulant food vendor for five years—said in an interview, Wednesday. Mendoza, who used to be a factory worker before getting married, claims she has yet to see an improvement of their plight.

While the Palace boasts of the supposed unprecedented upgrading of the country’s credit rating to “BBB-” by Fitch Ratings, last month—one of the world’s three major credit rating firms—and the pronouncement, during the Philippines Development Forum in Davao City, of no less than the World Bank Country Director Motoo Konishi, earlier this year, that the country “is no longer the sick man of East Asia, but the rising tiger,” Jillian Keenanmay of the online news wires service The Atlantic paints the opposite.

In her May 7 article “The Grim Reality Behind the Philippines’ Economic Growth,” Keenanmay posited that the economic growth only looks great “on paper” and that the “income inequality and unbalanced concentrations of wealth are extreme” in the country. “The economic boom appears to have only benefited a tiny minority of elite families; meanwhile, a huge segment of citizens remain vulnerable to poverty, malnutrition, and other grim development indicators that belie the country’s apparent growth.

Despite the stated goal of President Aquino’s Philippine Development Plan to oversee a period of “inclusive growth,” income inequality in the Philippines continues to stand out,” Keenanmay’s article reads. The current Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate—at 6.6 per cent—is the highest in Asia, second only to China. Keenanmay attributes this growth rate, in part, to the fact that the “Philippines has the youngest population in East Asia, which translates into lower costs to support a younger workforce and less economic drag from retirees.”

Also, for the first time in its history, the World Economic Forum moved the country’s global competitiveness ranking up ten points. “These economic improvements are in part due to President Benigno Aquino, whose steps to increase transparency and address corruption sparked renewed international confidence in the Filipino economy even during the global slowdown,” said Keenanmay. In Forbes Asia’s 2012 report showed the “collective wealth of the 40 richest Filipino families grew US$ 13 billion during the 2010-2011 year, to US$47.4 billion—an increase of 37.9 per cent,” she cited. According to the records of the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE), the combined net incomes of listed firms grew from Php 319.97 billion in January to September 2011 to Php 377.12 billion in the same period this year.

“Meanwhile, overall national poverty statistics remain bleak: 32 percent of children under age five suffer from moderate to severe stunting due to malnutrition, according to UNICEF, and roughly 60 percent of Filipinos die without ever having seen a health care professional,” wrote Keenanmay. Citing the latest report of the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) that there have been no statistical improvements in national poverty levels since 2006 until the first half of last year, Keenanmay observed that “even relative to its regional neighbors, the Philippine’ income inequality and unbalanced concentrations of wealth are extreme.”