It’s embarrassing that after 50 years—20 years of President Ferdinand E. Marcos administration and 30 years of his successors, President Corazon C. Aquino, her favorite son Benigno S. Aquino III and the three other presidents between them—the Philippines still remains at the bottom of the five original countries of the Asean.
By the way, Marcos spent in 20 years a total of P486.42 billion while his five successors splurged more than P35 trillion in 30 years of accumulated budgets.
By comparison, Marcos, warts and all, had more to show in terms of economic infrastructure developments, including roads, bridges, irrigation, schools, housing, hospitals, electricity, potable water and other tangible and intangible accomplishments than any of his successors, or all of them combined.
Based on the latest International Monetary Fund (IMF) data, here’s the per-capita income scoreboard in US currency: Singapore, $52,888; Malaysia, $9,501; Thailand, $5,742; Indonesia, $3,362; and the Philippines, $3,002.
Of the five other Asean members, Brunei Darussalam remains at the top with $30,993; followed by Vietnam, $2,088; Laos, $1,787; Myanmar, $1,212; and Cambodia, $1,144.
Consumer Price Index uses the US dollar as a reliable yardstick to measure the average income of people in one country compared with others, and is often used to determine a country’s standard of living and helps ascertain its GDP status.
The question is why is the Philippines in this distressing condition compared to the four other progressive Asean countries?
The answer is simple: the four countries care more about economics than they do of politics, have pursued rapid industrialization, research and development, independent foreign policies and took serious stand against corruption, insurgency, terrorism, drug abuse, smuggling and other crimes.
While they were busy expanding their economic reach in the regional and global markets, the Philippines remained agrarian and feudal, and its highly adversarial politics further divided the country, spawning oligarchy, insurgency, separatism, terrorism and the worst drug-abuse problem in the region.
When the five originally founded the Asean in August 1967, not one of them was an industrialized country. Today, the Philippines is the only one trapped in the preindustrial age, content as the biggest supplier of raw materials and contract workers to many advanced countries.
Economists Pitou van Dijck, Harmen Verbruggen and Hans Linnemann discussed in detail the economic situation of the Philippines on a timeline of events in their book, Export-Oriented Industrialization in Developing Countries:
“From 1950 onward, import substitution has been the principal policy to promote industrialization in the Philippines. Initially, this strategy relied on a strict regime of controls on imports to relieve the pressure on the balance of payments. The import regime was aimed at a sharp import reduction of so-called nonessential products, identified as nondurable consumer goods. Hence, the high average annual growth rate of manufacturing production of 12.1 percent from 1950 to 1955 was mainly realized by the domestic production of substitution for consumer goods.
“By the late 1950s, the domestic market started to impose serious limitations on further expansion. As a result, the manufacturing growth rate slowed down to 7.7 percent per annum from 1955 to 1960. In addition to the sluggish manufacturing growth, once again, the Philippines was faced with severe balance-of-payment problems in the late 1960s.
“Faced with this predicament, the government devised policies to intensify industrial efforts and actively promoted exports. The Industrial Incentives Act of 1967 provided incentives mainly in the form of tax privileges for industrial investments, aimed at boosting export production.
“The Act also extended other extra fiscal benefits, such as tax and duty-free importation of materials, with the purpose of reducing the cost of inputs and increasing competitiveness for exports. As a consequence of the export promotion program, the level of protection for the domestic market was relatively high.”
The authors further observed:
“The shift to a more export-oriented strategy of industrialization in the early 1970s marked again the beginning of a decade of better growth performance. During the 1970s the manufacturing sector showed again a stronger performance with an average annual growth rate of production of 7.0 percent. The pattern of effective protection in 1974 favored manufacturing over agriculture and mining. Until the early 1980s, the industrialization and trade strategy remained essentially intact.”
When Mrs. Aquino took over the presidency in 1986, she abolished the 1973 Constitution, demolished the Supreme Court, the parliament, deregulated the economy, adopted the policy of privatization and, thus, saw the country continued to retrogress until today, the 50th Asean anniversary.
Can President Duterte reverse the situation?
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com.