DAVAO CITY—While the Aquino government is preoccupied with the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona, it must also take seriously the warning that the global economy is on the edge of another damaging financial crisis this year.
A Party-list congressman questioned how prepared is the Aquino administration to address the risks on the Philippine economy and heed telltale signs of another round of global financial crisis by doing enough to prepare for the looming global meltdown.
Bayan Muna Rep. Teddy Casiño said Malacañang “ought to upgrade the alarm over this looming global crisis at the same level as it has given to the political activity now.”
“Economists and other experts have forecast a warning that we would be in for a worse time again,” Casiño told reporters here on Thursday last week following a meeting with small vendors and local government representatives in a public hearing on the proposed amendments of the Barangay Business Enterprise Law.
He said the telltale signs are growing at an alarming rate: the debt crisis in Europe, the continuing difficulty experienced by the US economy and the spreading conflicts in the Arab peninsula.
“It is likely that our BPOs [business- process outsourcing] would be severely hit,” he said.
With a continuing series of political upheavals hitting Arab countries, the remittance-dependent Philippine economy is expected to absorb the brunt with more than one-half of the more than 10 million overseas Filipino workers in the Middle East.
“Anytime now, it would hit the country, and it looks like Malacañang is lukewarm and not doing as much as it should,” he said.
He suggested priming up local businesses and strengthening the small ones saying that the micro-small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) comprise more than 750,000 firms and, though small, are contributing 61.2 percent of total employment in the country.
“We should go beyond the conditional-cash transfers and pantawid gutom programs,” he said. “We need to develop local entrepreneurs, dapat dito tayo bubuhos ng energy because this sector has helped us a lot during the last global financial crisis of 2008.”
