Applauding the economy’s giant 7.8-percent leap for the first quarter of the year, the World Bank and the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP), the organization of top business executives of the country, called for the conversion of this naked growth to inclusive growth, one that alleviates poverty and creates jobs for our masses.
President Aquino wants to be a reformist president, and he’s doing a good job at reforming society. His “daang matuwid” resonates with the people, and is something they want: a clean, honest government that cares. But they also want a decent life, and that he hasn’t yet provided.
In his column titled “Where are the billionaires and the superrich?” (Opinion, 4/22/13), Neal Cruz pitted the demand for higher wages against the need for more jobs. He said that if labor becomes too costly, investors will stay away from the country, and that workers should “accept lower wages first.”
Another day, another accolade for the country’s economic performance. The latest comes from Moody’s Analytics, which, in a report released six days ago, called the Philippines “Asia’s rising star” with a potential to become “one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.” Its 6.6-percent growth in 2012 is “impressive,” said the report—a growth that “looks sustainable, as risks are low and most sectors of the economy are growing solidly.”
Over the years there has been a mismatch between the quality of our graduates and the needs of industry. There have been efforts by the private sector (e.g., preemployment training) and the government (the K-to-12 system and Tesda’s notable TVET framework of school-based, center-based, enterprise-based and community-based training), but these are not enough especially if these are not implemented in congruence with a strategic national education master plan.
I heard that President Aquino had members of his Cabinet look closely into how the economy lost nearly a million jobs last year in spite of an exceptional 7.2-percent gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the same period. I called attention to the disturbing statistics at the Philippine Development Forum held in Davao last week, as a panelist in the session where Secretaries Balisacan, Abad and Purisima had summarized the Aquino administration’s economic achievements so far. The President was heard saying that the economist in him found it hard to reconcile such massive job losses with such impressive economic growth.
The Aquino administration flooded the media last week with the report that the economy expanded 6.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, lifting the full-year growth to 6.6 percent.
In the first week of the year, I found myself digging for something worthwhile to do. Or maybe a goal I could set my mind to. Because time is something I have in abundance as I now qualify to be in the ranks of the unemployed.
I think it’s been fairly well established that free, open markets work best. The world’s successful economies show that even well-meaning diktats invariably do more harm than good, even frustrating instead the intended good.
AS TO protecting farmers and workers in tobacco factories, do we care more about someone’s job than someone’s life? One would certainly hope not. But that’s what Philip Morris Fortune Tobacco Corp. (PMFTC) and the Philippine Tobacco Institute (PTI) are claiming. They consider jobs more important than life.
[On the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty are the words “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”] On the last Sunday of July we took a night cruise around lower Manhattan, the New York harbor and the Statue [...]
It’s been months since I left the University of the Philippines. With my departure, I brought with me the promises of a successful career, a head-turning university name, and a contract-worthy Latin honor.
