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IN a
global milieu of increasing scarcity of even the most
basic food staples, in addition to induced and natural
shortages of critical fuels, among the advantages the
Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (Jpepa)
presents as responses to these afflictions are systemic
approaches that immediately globalize our innate assets
and address our festering deficiencies.
There is
nothing wrong with a short-term strategy of defending a
weak economy against the assaults of scarcity.
Aggressively planting staples, halting the conversion of
arable land, rechannelling funds from corruption
conduits back to fertilizers, irrigation and pesticides
on the food-security arena and seriously pursuing
renewable fuels are appropriate responses. These,
however, address only one side of the economic balance
sheet. These must be coupled with aggressive
revenue-generation initiatives as scarcities lead to
higher prices making products virtually inaccessible.
For one,
the agricultural authorities can no longer simply say
that whenever local food supplies are low, with a strong
peso, importations can always be resorted to. That and
Arroyo’s corruption defaults got us into this rut in the
first place.
Energy
officials can also no longer point to deregulation as
convenient ways out. Both can no longer present the
illusion of proactive governance by calling for chatty
talkfests and summits that produce little more than
publicity, placebos and palliatives.
Solutions must be bolder. As global prices of critical
goods increase, we must arm our economy with long-term
revenues if we are to continue our hopelessly myopic
strategy of importations. In this, the Jpepa becomes
critical and cannot be reduced to issues its critics
attack it with.
Shorn of
hyperbolic yelling, what remains of the issues leveled
against the Jpepa are environmental and sovereignty
controversies adequately, if not forcefully, addressed
by the Constitution. It would take Herculean, if not
impossible, forces to change those. Unfortunately,
emanating from critics alienated from both the
management and operation of the economy, while they miss
out on its importance, they generate vicious opinion.
Fortunately, pump-priming revenue-rich market
development through the Jpepa’s demand-side economics
cannot come at a better time as we spin out of control
on the supply side of rice and energy economics.
One of
Arroyo’s most rabid supporters, an economics professor
and a business columnist, has swallowed hook, line and
sinker the illogic of having no rice shortage, just
prohibitively high prices. Not only does this play into
the anomaly of the importation default but, also, it
refuses to recognize that high prices are symptomatic of
a global grain undersupply.
Worse,
albeit typical of a severe case of the sycophantic
syndrome, it assumes that the public earns enough
revenue to afford rice at any price.
Such
ivory-tower Marie Antoinette callousness betrays the
insensitivity and alienation of theoretical economics.
Where would the public earn the revenue to afford the
importations? The treatise is imperceptive as it
dismisses the festering economic imbalance proven by
Arroyo’s own statistics where, of the three GDP sectors
among industry, agriculture and services, only the last
has shown any real prosperity.
Inequitable economic governance, a coterie of military
minds and other simpletons at the Palace effectively
warped the delicate balances among sectors that comprise
productivity. That has led to tragic disproportions
where we’ve actively neglected industrial and
agricultural growth in favor of the services sector. The
effect is that we’ve consigned the educated as glorified
telephone operators and rely on inward remittances from
the caregiving skills of trained and educated teachers,
doctors and other qualified professionals. While we
boast of increasing GDP growth, a deeper analysis shows
that it merely mirrors incomes in one sector where a
small segment of our population lies.
The
Jpepa not only addresses those imbalances but provides a
demand-side boost for neglected sectors. On the aspect
of nurturing rich markets for high-value industrial
goods, describing it as a vehicle for “coherent growth,”
the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry echoes
the support for the Jpepa by the Philippine Exporters
Confederation; same with the Semiconductors and
Electronics Industries of the Philippines (Seipi) and
other commercial and industrial organizations.
For
Seipi, the Jpepa’s synergies work both ways. As of 2006,
the electronics industry has exported $30 billion, of
which $6 billion were exported by Japanese companies in
the
Philippines.
In the electronics industry, of $1 billion in
investments, $350 million are by 200 Japanese companies
(out of 900 electronic companies) all employing
approximately 130,000 Filipinos.
Let’s be
more specific. The Jpepa enhances market penetration
through the supply of goods with comparative advantages.
Added to the Japanese-branded electronic products
produced here, these other goods are our fish, fruits,
charcoal, iron-ore concentrates, nonferrous metal,
silver platinum ores, crude vegetable materials, wood
manufactures, office machines, travel goods, handbags,
clothes, watches and clocks and other manufactured
goods.
Under
the Jpepa, tariffs will be eliminated within 10 years
for electronic appliances and their parts, while tariffs
on nearly all textiles and apparel will be eliminated
immediately. This opens the Japanese market to local
apparel manufacturers, encouraging the expansion of the
industry.
The
logic is simple. The Jpepa’s strategy is to spur
industrial and agricultural production by increasing
demand for both high- and low- value Philippine products
in prolific markets. The net effect contributes to GDP
growth in a more equitable and “coherent” manner than
does the services sector. The latter, while providing
some employment, does not create true economic wealth as
might growth in industry and agriculture. |
