The Philippines had been likened to Sisyphus of Greek mythology, who was punished to eternity by Zeus to push a huge boulder up a hill, only to slide back to the bottom before reaching the top.
The Sisyphean, or “Sisyphus syndrome”, describes how we often rise with a strong sense of nationhood during momentous events, like the People Power Edsa Revolution of 1986, only to slide back again and, worst, act like stupid lemmings racing to their death into the sea.
High growth, but worst poverty? While we brag to have posted among the highest growth rates in Asia at 6 percent in 2016, besting Indonesia’s 5.2 percent, Malaysia’s 4.6 percent, Thailand’s 3.1 percent, Vietnam’s 5.9 percent, Singapore’s 2.4 percent and Brunei’s 0.5 percent, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development statistics, this is empty braggadocio.
For one, less-developed neighbors are growing much better, with Cambodia at 7.1 percent; Lao PDR, 7.0 percent; and Myanmar, 8.2 percent.
An Asian Development Bank (ADB) study done on 51 developing countries noted that for every 1-percent increase in income, poverty drops by 1.5 percent or even as much as 2 percent among Asian countries, except the Philippines.
From 2004 to 2009, for instance, our GDP grew by 4.9 percent, but poverty even increased to 26.5 percent in 2009.
Golden age of infrastructure. With Dutertenomics spelled out concretely as the “Golden Age of Infrastructure” by Neda Chief Ernesto M. Pernia and Budget Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno, there is hope the Duterte administration can break the Sisyphus syndrome.
About P8.4 trillion will be spent on massive infrastructure alone within Duterte’s term. This will string together remote regions and islands, making them more accessible to outside markets, investments and tourism.
Diokno says it is an opportune time to finance infrastructure, as interest rates on foreign borrowings are now as low as 0.25 percent.
To avoid the risks of future peso devaluations, when we are made to pay more pesos for the same dollar of debts, perhaps it is advisable to also tap local funding, as domestic savings rate as of 2015 are as much as 30.3 percent of gross national income, while gross capital formation rate was only 19.8 percent.
This means most surplus savings are just held unproductively in private commercial banks, but can be tapped for rural infrastructure with matching government guarantees and serve as a better compliance to the agri-agra loan law, which requires banks to lend 25 percent of their portfolio to agriculture, but allowed to buy T-bills as a form of paper compliance.
Agriculture and physical- wealth creation. Financial growth without physical-wealth creation does not create productive jobs. Infrastructure is a good start but, to be more inclusive, we need to develop agriculture, where two-thirds of people living below the poverty line are based, and, thus, stop massive rural-to-urban migration of rural folks escaping the clutches of rural misery, only to end up shackled in urban poverty.
Records show that rural poverty in the Philippines only dropped by 14.7 percent over 14 years, from 46.9 percent in 2000 to about 40 percent in 2014, making us miss our Millennium Development Goals of halving poverty and still the highest rural- poverty incidence in Asean.
In contrast, Thailand, which focused on agriculture, reduced rural poverty by 73.2 percent in only 12 years, from 51.5 percent in 2001 to 13.9 percent in 2013. Rural poverty in other Asean countries also did better than us, with Indonesia’s rural poverty down to 13.8 percent in 2014; Vietnam down to 17.4 percent in 2010; and Malaysia to 8.4 percent as early as 2009.
Duterte must heed FVR. One stumbling block that is plaguing Duterte is his foul mouth, which suffers from oral diarrhea and foot-in-mouth disease. The problem is that what he says is taken as policy pronouncement. This is where he needs to listen to former President Fidel V. Ramos, who just launched his book authored by friend Mel T. Velasco, entitled “RPDEV at 15: Our Continuing Voyage for Enduring Peace and Development”.
Duterte must also welcome the press as the public’s best feedback mechanism. Inherently, there is this symbiotic, but antagonistic, relationship between the government and the press, as officials hate it when they are misquoted, but the press loves it when officials get things wrong. Moreover, the press will not write much about the achievements of officials, because that is their job, but will play them up when they are not doing their jobs.
People appreciate him for his efforts to wipe out drugs and corruption, but are wary about extra-judicial killings (EJKs). It is true that there are destabilization moves from certain opposition groups and druglords themselves, who are riding on legitimate issues, but it is partly because of Duterte’s tolerance for excesses of his police force, and his minions and trolls in social media that all forms of killings have been lumped as EJKs, an issue now escalating in the international scene.
FVR wants to remind Duterte that his 16 million votes is not yet majority and his ratings have been declining. It is not yet too late for Duterte to shape up, but he must learn from Sisyphus, who was known for his avarice, deceitfulness, hubris and for taking pleasure in killing travelers and guests to maintain his iron-fisted rule, which infuriated Zeus.
E-mail: mikealunan@yahoo.com
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