TODAY, I mark the end of my first week as a salaried employee.
My days as a bum are now over. Well, I wasn't really a bum. I was
a son-of-the-owner person. I began my work day sleeping in bed. My
only functions in life were to eat, sleep, and sleep some more.
I relinquish my control over the means of production in this country
with much hesitation and much regret. Things could be better for our
small-to-medium enterprises (SME's) but the current money supply and
the precarious debt levels of our banks are squeezing the lifeblood
out of our older entrepreneurs.
I have no statistics to back me up, only anecdotal evidence. Statistics
are worthless in this country anyway.
In a few days, my aunt, who produces a semi-famous flavored lambanog
brand will hide from her creditors once more, because her convenience
store (that funded the lambanog business in the first place) has now
turned into a sinkhole: she put her house for rent and moved into
a house that my family used to rent to others (that was the nature
of our business—we were landpeople).
My uncle, who owns a machine shop, will starve this weekend just to
feed his newborn baby boy—his sixth boy—and his eighth
in all. He owns a machine shop (we paid for his equipment) that survives
just because all the machinists are paid half the minimum wage. SME's
are exempt from labor laws. None of his children are in a position
to help: his eldest son is a sophomore at Mapua, and his common-law
wife has children from other relationships to feed.
My father used to own a multimillion peso storage facility. Now he
spends his days fighting the banks. He thinks he's getting away with
murder because the banks haven't repossessed his properties, but my
fear is that the banks are hesitating because they don't want to increase
their non-performing loan (NPL) ratio.
My mother has lost her will to do business after seeing project after
project go down the drain along with her hard-earned money. She now
spends her days playing Gin on Yahoo! Games.
We don't have enough money to cover our real estate taxes. Some of
our land worth millions might be foreclosed because of unpaid taxes
worth hundreds of thousands.
The Department of Tourism reports that domestic tourism increased
this year because of the SARS scare. Truth is, domestic tourism doesn't
need a SARS scare to have more domestic tourists this year: no one
has enough money to go abroad for a good time.
Someone wise once said that bad things don't prove what you can do,
they prove what you can't. We don't need Adela Catalon to remind us
how inept our medical services are, we all know how sorry our health
care is. We know that a recession is in the bag. International trade
is collapsing all around. No one wants to do business with China or
Hong Kong. Singapore's not growing. We're not going to grow. Business
are closing.
I think I should know on that last one—I just closed my family's
business.
Almighty Someone Out There, have mercy on us.
