“It’s agriculture, stupid!” roars Dr. Bernardo Villegas in his article, “Agricultural development spells the difference.” (Inquirer, 8/8/11) He then proclaims that if Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam have surpassed the Philippines in economic growth, it is because of their “greater emphasis” on agriculture.
Facts show that it is not agriculture but industry that is driving the growth of the economies he mentioned. In Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, the industry sector makes up the biggest composition of GDP: Indonesia—46.4 percent, Thailand—45.6 percent, and Vietnam—41 percent. Industry’s composition of GDP in the Philippines is the lowest at 31.3 percent.
Agriculture makes up the smallest contribution to GDP in the three other countries: Indonesia—16.5 percent, Thailand—10.4, and Vietnam—20.6. (In the United States, agriculture contributes only 1.2 percent.) Agriculture is the largest component of GDP in the Philippines at 31.3 percent. Therefore it is the Philippines that puts the most emphasis on agricultural development among the four countries. Yet our agriculture, Villegas himself admits, is the least productive. (All figures are based on the CIA Factbook, 2010.)
Among the four, the Philippines has the largest services sector: Philippines—54 percent, Indonesia—37.1, Thailand—44, and Vietnam—38.3. Services include any human activity, such as barbering and even prostitution, that does not produce goods. This means that having a relatively big services sector does not necessarily translate to high economic growth. It depends upon the nature of the services, whether they are in industry, science, commerce, agriculture or household.
So why is agriculture in our country more backward than those in the other mentioned countries? The reason is that a non-industrialized country cannot acquire the modern machinery (such as tractors and harvesters), infrastructure (like silos), and inputs (like fertilizers) that are required by a highly productive agricultural sector. Only an industrialized country can have the capital and the capability to acquire them, aside from generating more employment and income than agriculture.
Villegas’ advice to local policymakers to put emphasis on agriculture is thus detrimental to our national interest as it would perpetuate and deepen our poverty.
Villegas’ main purpose in his article was to deny that high fertility rates contribute to high poverty rates. But the statistics show that the Philippines has the highest fertility rate among the four countries with 3.23 average births per woman, yet also has the highest poverty rate at 32 percent of total population. Thailand’s fertility rate is 1.54, below replacement, but with a poverty rate of 9.6 percent; Vietnam, 1.94 fertility and 12 percent poverty; and Indonesia, 2.28 fertility and 13.33 percent poverty. These facts indicate that the higher the fertility, the higher the poverty; the lower the fertility, the lower the poverty.
—MANUEL F. ALMARIO, spokesman, Movement for Truth in History,
mfalmario@yahoo.com