Category: Economy

Economic figures catch up with reality

Ellen Leave a comment

Thanks to Yahoo for photo.

Thanks to Yahoo for photo.

I thought I was the only one who could not connect the glowing assessments of multinational financial firms and day- to- day realities.

I thought I and my friends are the only ones who have not been showered with the financial blessings the government is boasting of.

Then even as international financial firms continue to hail the Philippines as “s the strongest performing economy in Asia today, “reports came out of a Triple whammy: Exports and Foreign Direct Investments down and unemployment up.

ABS-CBN’s Coco Alcuaz reported that “Unemployment rose to a 3-year high as the total number of employed persons dropped, contrary to a government claim that employment is rising just not as fast as the workforce. The jobless rate rose to 7.5% in April, the highest since April 2010.”

“At the same time, exports fell again in April, as declines in sales of chemicals and some manufactured products…. offset a steadying in electronics. The National Statistics Office reports exports dropped almost 13% to $4 billion.

“Also, foreign direct investment was negative in March, meaning foreigners pulled out more than they put in. In March, they put in $56 million and withdrew $73 million, a net withdrawal of $17 million.”

This triple whammy I can very well understand. My pocket understands it very well.

Results of the latest labor force survey by the government’s NSO showed that unemployment rate as of April 2013 was 7.5 percent , up from 6.9 April last year.

How many Filipinos are jobless at 7.5 percent unemployment rate? NSO put the population of 15 years old and over at 64,028,000. Seven point five percent equals 4,802,100 jobless Filipinos.

NSO said the increase in the number of unemployed were significant among two groups: “ These were the farmers, forestry workers and fishermen whose number decreased to approximately 4.960 million in April 2013 from 5.398 million in April 2012, or a decrease of about 438 thousand workers; and the laborers and unskilled workers whose number dropped by approximately 384 thousand. “

These are numbers that represent Filipinos who have to eat three times a day, with children who have to go to school. God forbid if they get sick.

What happened then to the upbeat credit ratings?

University of the Philippines Former Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno said the Aquino government is so “obsessed with achieving credit ratings upgrade at the expense of real, jobs-generating growth.”

International credit companies give the country good credit ratings because it has reduced its borrowings and expenditures. No spending on infrastructure like roads, airports which should have helped perk up the economy.

The lack of infrastructure resulted in decrease in foreign investments (why would foreigners invest in a country where airports, roads, transport are bad and inefficient?). Lack of foreign investment equals fewer jobs. Less jobs means more poor Filipinos.
But we have good credit ratings, the government boasted. Makakain ba yan?

Confronted with unpleasant reality, Aquino goes into denial mode

Ellen Leave a comment

Modern-day Pieta. Not an unusual sight in Metro Manila's sidewalks and underpasses.

Modern-day Pieta. Not an unusual sight in Metro Manila’s sidewalks and underpasses.

Updated:Malacanang says PNoy not disparaging NSCB

President Aquino is discrediting the report of his own government agency- National Statistical Coordination Board which says the much-vaunted impressive economic growth has not trickled down to the teeming poor in the country.

The NSDB official release said: “Poverty incidence among population was estimated at 27.9 percent during the first semester of 2012. Comparing this with the 2006 and 2009 first semester figures estimated at 28.8 percent and 28.6 percent, respectively, poverty remained unchanged as the computed differences are not statistically significant.”

In simpler terms, life for the Filipino poor has not improved in the past six years.

Aquino must have been so furious that government figures don’t jibe with the upbeat assessments of global think tanks and rating agencies about Philippine economy posting impressive growth that he bumped off from his Brunei delegation Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Asean Summit in Brunei, Aquino was quoted by ABS-CBN as saying, “May konti akong duda… Hindi ba doon hindi nga ni-report nang tama ‘yung population, ‘yung population na pagkukunan mo ng per capita, paano naging tama ‘yung comparison in ‘09 and ‘12?”

He said he “has reservations over data on ARMM where poverty incidence was found to have worsened. He said that comparing current data with those from the previous administration may not be reliable since some information collected from that region had to be corrected, including its voting population.

He also said that results of government’s health and education programs for the poor, as well as the conditional cash transfer program, should be looked at.

ABS-CBN also said Aquino cited government’s “intervention” in agriculture that helped reduce the price of milkfish (bangus) compared to galunggong.

Aquino disputing publicly government statistics makes us recall the reaction of Gloria Arroyo in June 2006 when her education secretary, Fe Hidalgo, reported that there was a classroom shortage of 6,132 rooms.

She berated Hidalgo in a cabinet meeting where she was doing the presentation. She reminded Hidalgo of her instruction not to use the ratio of 1 classroom to 45 pupils, which was the ideal situation conducive to learning but to use 100 to 1 ratio because they increased the class size to 50 and since there are two shifts in one day, 100 students use one classroom.

A humiliated Hidalgo went back to the Department of Education, did some dagdag-bawas, and came back to Malacañang with a glowing report that there was no more classroom shortage.

We are wondering what Balisacan is going to do when Aquino comes back. Is he going to revise his poverty statistics?”

Anyhow, on the record, here are excerpts from the press release of the NSCB on poverty incidence in the country:

“During the first semester of 2012, a Filipino family of five needed PhP 5,458 to meet basic food needs every month and Php 7,821 to stay above the poverty threshold (basic food and non-food needs) every month. These respective amounts represent the food and poverty thresholds, which increased by 11.1 percent from the first semester of 2009 to the first half of 2012, compared to the 26.0 percent-increase between the 1st semesters of 2006 and 2009.

“The food threshold is the minimum income required by an individual to meet his/her basic food needs and satisfy the nutritional requirements set by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI), while remaining economically and socially productive. Put another way, the food threshold helps measure food poverty or “subsistence,” which may also be described as extreme poverty.

“The subsistence incidence, which represents the proportion of Filipino families in extreme poverty, was estimated at 10.0 percent during the first semester of 2012. At 10.0 percent in the first semester of 2009 and 10.8 percent in the first half of 2006, the differences among these three figures remain statistically insignificant.

“In terms of poverty incidence among families, the NSCB estimates a rate of 22.3 percent during the first semester of 2012, and 23.4 percent and 22.9 percent during the same periods in 2006 and 2009, respectively.”