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There is
an urgent and pressing need to arrest, if not reverse,
the chronic brain drain led by the millions of overseas
Filipino workers (OFWs) and émigrés—not by restrictions
that force them to stay against their will, but by
addressing their reasons for leaving: the lack of
opportunities at home to improve their quality of life
and provide for a better future for their families. It
is lamentable to hear top government leaders celebrating
the exodus of OFWs in anticipation of their monthly
remittances that only feed private-consumption spending.
Economists must agree that the value of OFWs is not $12
billion a year, which translates to a paltry $100 a
month, assuming a combined 10 million OFWs and émigrés.
Rather, the real economic value of our OFWs is reflected
in the national -income accounts of their host
countries, not to mention tax revenues they pay
diligently. This holds true whether they render services
in medical health in North America or in architecture
and construction in the Middle East; whether they pilot
the world’s jetliners or steer oceangoing vessels; and
whether they are investment bankers in Singapore or care
for the children of investment bankers in
Hong Kong. Arguably, the real economic value of OFWs and émigrés is
vastly more substantial than the monthly remittance of
$100. Imagine, therefore, if the country can benefit
directly from OFW contributions to their host nations.
The value of our GDP must be easily double, if not
nearing triple, our official records.
These 10
million are obviously among the best and the brightest
Filipinos for them to compete globally—all of whom have
come to realize that they can fetch higher compensation
for their world-class skills and talent that go
unrewarded locally. Those who claim that local companies
cannot afford to pay higher salaries must remember the
consolidated net income of the country’s top 1,000
corporations reached P500 billion in 2005 alone—not to
mention the cumulative earnings in the years before and
the average 25-percent growth for the past two years. By
attrition, therefore, the country has been left with
second-tier talent which, coupled with the deterioration
in the quality of education that produces unqualified
and unemployable college graduates, is resulting in a
loss of competitiveness. It may not be presumptuous to
say that OFWs and émigrés may also possess stronger
values in terms of work ethic and competitiveness,
discipline and perseverance, integrity and
accountability—by virtue of the demands of working in a
foreign land amidst an increasingly competitive global
marketplace—and, therefore, we have not only been
suffering a serious “brain drain” but, perhaps more
worrisome, a “values vacuum.”
As a
result, what we have been left with is a nation of
consumers, because our productive workers drive the
wheels of industry in their host countries (instead of
ours), remitting enough only for their families’
domestic consumption. Therefore, while most developing
countries are enhancing the intellectual capital of
their people like high-tech India (not just call-center
agents); achieving surpluses in food production and
becoming a global agricultural powerhouse like Vietnam;
or strengthening their manufacturing muscle like China,
the “superfactory” of the world, the Philippines has
become the “supermarket of the planet,” content with
buying virtually everything from the world in
shop-till-you-drop mall sales or amusing ourselves with
being the world’s leading cell-phone texters.
Yet,
perhaps the most harmful side effects of the OFW
diaspora are the incalculable social costs of physical
separation between families, the basic unit of any
society—many of which have ultimately ended in marital
infidelity and broken homes, juvenile delinquency and
lack of values formation, employer abuse and sexual-
identity disorders.
How can
we reverse our brain drain and rechannel the
contribution of Filipinos to the national economy
instead of just driving the economic growth of their
host countries?
Encourage profit-sharing and share ownership among our
businesses, because workers who are part owners are more
productive. They will drive revenues and cut costs on
their own. Even the government can promote this by
levying lower income-tax rates for companies that
practice profit-sharing. As we provide our workers with
the opportunity to be the best they can be, and reward
them for their entrepreneurial spirit, we can also
dissuade them from leaving to earn higher salaries—only
to work for foreign bosses.
In
parallel, we need to reduce our cost of living that
would make our cost structures more competitive to
attract more foreign investors and generate more
employment and higher incomes. This would require a
maniacal focus on achieving not only self-sufficiency
but surpluses in food production that can be exported;
drastically reducing our power costs by objectively
evaluating alternative forms, including nuclear energy;
higher investments in physical infrastructure (without
the Standard Operating Payola); upgrading the quality of
education beginning in nursery, and extending the number
of primary to secondary years in line with global
standards; providing affordable medicines plus quality
health care; and redistributing land for the landless
and homes for the homeless, which all contribute to
promoting a climate conducive for foreign and local
investments.
Arguably
the single most important factor that can encourage
reverse migration or a “brain gain”—the absence of which
is precisely the very reason why our countrymen have
left—is inspirational leadership in government similar
to the legendary examples of our Asian neighbors like
the great Mahatma Gandhi, Deng Xiao Ping, King Bhumipol
Adulyadej, Lee Kuan Yew, Park Chung Hee, Mahathir
Mohammad and Ho Chi Minh.
While
the greatest triumph of the Philippine economy in the
last four decades has been the OFW phenomenon, the
greatest tragedy would be if their children and
grandchildren would continue to be OFWs themselves
because government leaders, economic planners and
industrialists failed to capitalize on the priceless
self-sacrifice, precious “borrowed time” and hard-earned
remittances to build a strong agricultural base and a
globally competitive industrial sector that should have
provided food and livelihood at home.
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The author is the president of Business Mentors Inc., a
newly formed management consultancy firm, and
concurrently regional director of ZMG Ward Howell, a
leading provider of human-capital solutions. He is also
a professorial lecturer in various business and economic
schools after having worked himself as an expatriate for
18 years across the Asia-Pacific region for leading MNCs
and Philippine conglomerates. He is a Business
Administration graduate from the UP and an industrial
economist from CRC. |
