THE TASKS facing the nation are awesome. Ours is a devastated economy,
with industries that are in various stages of collapse, an agriculture
that is barely able to cover the food and survival requirements of
those who till the land, a stock market which is the worst performing
in Asia, a currency devalued so many times over, and a treasury which
depends mainly on borrowings, external and internal. Nearly six decades
after independence, over one-third of our work force either cannot
find jobs or are stuck in precarious forms of livelihood. More than
3,000 Filipinos leave the country every day, in search of pastures
they cannot find in their own homeland.
And yet, there was a time, in the 1960s, when our economy was considered
one of the most promising in Asia. Industrial experts from Korea,
Taiwan and other Asian countries used to visit the country to find
out how close we were to producing another Asian car, after the earlier
success of Japan. Agricultural experts from Thailand, Vietnam and
other Asian countries used to visit the country to find out the latest
techniques in greening the countryside and ensuring food sufficiency
for their growing populations.
Today, our economy is but a shadow of its past. Our very own economic
technocrats—guided by a simplistic ideology of reducing economic
policy choices to questions of either going export-oriented or not,
of either adopting a labor-intensive or capital-intensive approach,
and of either relying on foreign investments or going it alone—have
succeeded in vitiating the vibrancy of the industrial process of the
l950s and the l960s, confusing the nation on the industrial directions
it should take in the l960s onwards and, worst, killing the emerging
culture of industrialism while initiating a program of dependence
on foreign borrowings and kowtowing to foreign economic dictation.
Three decades of neoliberal economic orthodoxy have stunted our growth
as a nation and have allowed the original Asian NICs (South Korea,
Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong), the new Asian NICs (Malaysia, Thailand
and Indonesia for a while), and China and India to overtake and leave
us behind in the industrialization process. Today, the war-devastated
Vietnam and other South Asian countries are on the way to surpassing
us.
Today, the nation is drowning in a sea of imports, which are killing
whatever remains of our agriculture and our industry, big and small.
Today, our industrial and agricultural producers are asked to be globally
competitive, price- and quality-wise, even if they suffer serious
handicaps—poor and expensive infrastructures, inaccessible formal
credit, high cost of power and utilities, unfriendly bureaucracy,
unstable currency and a generally difficult economic environment.
To make matters worse, our very own trading partners do not hesitate
to dump their excess products in our market while protecting their
own industries and agriculture through subsidies, arbitrary tariff
impositions and numerous nontariff barriers. Trade has never been
so unfair, as those who preach free trade are the very first to violate
its rules. And our own technocrats have made it worse by arbitrarily
and unilaterally liberalizing our markets ahead of other countries.
The case of Australia taking advantage of our liberalized markets
and still closing theirs to our own products illustrates the real
nature of trade under globalization.
To complicate matters, more liberalization schedules—in agriculture,
services, domestic market and so on—are on the WTO and AFTA
agenda, and still our government has not drawn up a clear development
strategy to deal with the challenges of globalization, has not put
in place a readiness program to ensure the survival and growth of
industry and agriculture, and has not mobilized the people behind
such a strategy. Instead, what is being foisted on the nation is a
nebulous 747 Plan, which seeks to apply at the industry level the
failed free-trade neoliberal framework adopted by the erstwhile macroeconomic
planners.
To further complicate things, we have a divided country, brought
about, among others, by the failure of our leaders to unite the people
behind a nationalist vision of development anchored on an economy
effectively controlled by Filipinos. Separatist tendencies and various
forms of insurgency are raging because the country’s poor economic
performance is providing them a rich breeding ground.
But worst of all, a palpable sense of defeatism is taking hold on
an increasing number of our frustrated people.
Shall we remain silent and passive amid all these adversities?
No, we shall not keep silent. No, we shall not be passive. We are
Filipinos who believe in the future of the Philippines. We are Filipinos
who have not lost hope in our country and people. With unity and patriotism,
we Filipinos can rebuild our economy, rebuild our society, rebuild
our future. With our collective industry, creativity and solidarity,
we can be among the most developed countries in Asia and the world.
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From abs-cbnNEWS.com
