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OVER the
past couple of years or so, Filipinos who feel they need
to take a break from the blood and gore in the political
arena have turned to economic developments as a source
of good news.
For
instance, the best GDP growth rate in three decades that
was recorded last year served to reassure us that all is
not lost, after all. Politicos and would-be politicians
relentlessly tangled for power, but business kept
humming along even when it did not look safe to do so.
The inflation rate remained steady at low single-digit
figures. The Philippine peso continued to appreciate
even in the midst of a coup attempt and the most serious
scandal to rock the Arroyo administration.
Finally,
we consoled ourselves, the economy has learned to
insulate itself from political bickering. But then, the
new numbers began coming in.
Notwithstanding record GDP growth rate, the number of
Filipinos who are desperately poor has continued to
rise. New wealth has not trickled down fast enough,
causing observers to ask if it ever would. As if that
were not bad enough, the prices of basic commodities
keep rising, resurrecting fears of the high inflation
rates that we all suffered from not too long ago and
hitting hardest the low-income earners who can least
afford it.
Interestingly, government economists seem to
support—unintentionally, we’re certain—the
antiadministration line. One of them, after citing the
flurry of super typhoons in 2006 that curtailed farm
production last year, said the government’s decision to
expand the value-added tax and raise it to 12 percent
has aggravated our economic woes.
The
higher commodity prices, the economist said, resulted
from the need to raise the government’s tax collection.
He did add, however, that the short-term effects of
higher prices would be more than offset by the long-term
consequences of the government’s good financial
condition.
The
others went on to mention such factors as the country’s
high population growth, which tends to wipe out whatever
gains the economy posts as there always seems to be more
and more babies to feed, clothe, shelter, educate, etc.
Even
more remarkable—actually confounding—none of the
economists pointed out how energy prices have driven up
and continue to drive up the prices of commodities,
basic or otherwise. In fact, the skyrocketing cost of
fossil fuels is the single-biggest factor for the
economic slowdown in the United States, where recession
is certain to affect its trading partners, including the
Philippines. Dwindling petroleum reserves and political
conflicts in a number of oil-producing countries have
driven up fuel prices to stratospheric heights.
The
Philippines now has no choice but to pay oil exporters
even more money for fuel, but it need not always be that
way. The country has tremendous potential to achieve
independence, not just from imported petroleum, but more
so from fossil fuels altogether. Unfortunately, several
politicians—including some allied with the Arroyo
administration—continue to block the road to energy
self-sufficiency.
Take the
case of jatropha, which a subsidiary of the state-owned
Philippine National Oil Co. has been trying to develop
as a viable source of biofuel and even bioplastics.
The PNOC-Alternative
Fuels Corp. (PNOC-AFC) has tagged jatropha as the most
viable feedstock for biodiesel, which can run commuter
buses, delivery trucks, ferry boats and even power
plants far cheaper and cleaner than petroleum-sourced
diesel fuel. Although commercial production of biodiesel
from jatropha, locally known as tuba-tuba, has yet to
start in commercial quantity, PNOC-AFC has already come
under fire over various issues.
Issue 1:
Biodiesel production would divert the agricultural
production away from food crops and animal feed.
Farmland that used to grow foodstuffs would be turned
into biodiesel-production fields, giving rise to the
prospect of widespread famine.
Those
issues are certainly germane to such crops as corn and
palm, which other countries now tap for biofuel.
However, they do not apply to the oil-rich jatropha,
which is inedible to both humans and animals anyway, and
thrives best on soil types unsuitable for growing food
crops. PNOC-AFC officials, led by their chairman Renato
Velasco, note that the more jatropha oil is produced,
the more oil from corn, soya, palm, coconut or canola
can be freed up from industrial use and thus used to
expand food supply.
Jatropha
can thrive on dry and steep scrubland, including
logged-over areas; it may be planted to support
reforestation projects and to safeguard watersheds. It
can also be intercropped in existing farms where land is
typically underutilized. Needless to say, growing
jatropha on the side could supplement farmer incomes.
Compared
with other biodiesel feedstock, jatropha has the highest
net positive carbon-reduction effect because of its life
span, per PNOC-AFC officials. Tuba-tuba is not
periodically farmed, but is planted just once and
thereafter good for the next 40 to 50 years. Soya,
rapeseed, canola and similar biodiesel feedstock demand
a lot of fossil-fuel based energy and inputs like
fertilizer, which negate the carbon-emission advantage
of the biodiesel they produce.
Moreover, the officials add, jatropha can produce not
only biodiesel for mass transport and power generation,
but it can also replace the petrochemicals used in the
production of polymers, i.e., plastics. Unlike plastic
products made from petroleum byproducts, bioplastic from
jatropha is biodegradable.
To be
sure, there remain serious unresolved questions that
scientists and experts need to resolve about jatropha,
in particular, and certain highly touted alternative
fuels, in general. And then, of course, there is also
the problem, cited in this space earlier, about the
energy department’s seeming lack of direction in
steering initiatives in—not just alternative fuels—but
also in ensuring a broad-based, sustainable
energy-development program in the long term. This
coherent, clear framework is important, given recent
revelations about how one state agency alone, Philippine
Forest Corp., previously headed by Jun Lozada, had gone
on a jatropha-planting spree across the land. Unless the
government plans are clear, we may end up with billions
of pesos spent solely for planting God-knows-what type
of jatropha (there are more than 100 varieties), wasting
scarce funds.
Still,
there’s every reason to continue efforts to ensure that
this lowly plant once good only for fencing off pasture
is used to help solve many of our toughest economic and
environmental problems. It would be a shame to deny
ourselves its benefits simply because of incompetence or
graft. |
