THEY hit the ground running. On the opening day of the elections on launching sites deemed occupied by supporters, the candidates for the highest position in the land harangued their audiences with what they will do in the event of their election: Increase the Conditional Cash-Transfer Program, broaden medical coverage, widen free education, deepen social-security benefits, provide financial support to small enterprises and increase senior-citizen entitlements.
So what is wrong with those promises? Nothing really, even if it can be argued that they inculcate a dependency syndrome among the people. Where else would you want to spend the people’s money? What can be improper with using public money to uplift the people’s welfare?
What is wrong is that, while the promises all constitute actions on the expenditures side of the budget, nobody is bothering to ask about the revenue side. In other words, nobody is asking where the money will be coming from.
It seems only proper that if politicians are promising increases in consumption, they should tell us about parallel increases in production—the economic activities that give rise to taxes without which commitments to increase consumption cannot be realized. The improvement of the lives of the people is, of course, the ultimate objective of all political action, but the development of the economy is the instrument for attaining it.
It has become commonplace in our country to call for increased employment as a means for eradicating or reducing the poverty that afflicts one-fourth of our population. We cannot create employment, however, without harnessing investment.
At this point, we find a call of the Joint Foreign Chambers (JFC) in its Arangkada Philippines program as extremely relevant. The JFC said the next administration should have a clear economic blueprint that will allow the Philippines to attract more foreign direct investments (FDI) and grow faster. Arangkada Philippines targeted $75 billion in FDI for the period 2010-2020. From 2011-2015, the Philippines attracted $20 billion in FDI.
Additional data on FDI among members of the Asean is instructive. In 2013, the last full year when data was available in the Asian Development Bank’s Key Indicators, the Philippines attracted a total of $3.74 billion in FDI, while Indonesia attracted $23.34 billion; Malaysia, $11.58 billion; Singapore, $64.79 billion; Thailand, $14.3 billion; and Vietnam, $8.9 billion. Clearly, we have a long way to travel in the attraction of FDI to our economy.
Constitutional or not, the need of our economy for increased FDI cannot be denied. Increased FDI is the only way we can augment our extremely inadequate domestic investment to place our economy on the path of rapid growth.
The candidates for the highest position in the land can promise heaven on earth to the electorate, but if they have nothing to say on the economy, specifically on how it can generate the jobs that a great many of the Filipino people need in order to overcome poverty, they are not serving the people well.
Image credits: Benjo Laygo