Focus on jobs

Politicians are going to make all sorts of promises over the next two months. In the main these will be what they think the voters want to hear—and, in the main, generalities with little sound basis for accomplishment. Let me give you a few ideas on what I’d like them to promise instead.

The foundation of whatever is promised should be: jobs. Everything should revolve around creating jobs. Simplistic? Yes, but the best things evolve from simple beginnings. If you focus on job creation, everything else follows.

Take the most basic of human rights: health. You have to be healthy to get and do a job. So, it is essential that the government provide the ability of everyone at every level to be kept healthy and to be treated when sick. To be kept healthy, you need to eat well, so production of food at affordable cost is a necessary condition toward being capable of working. And if you are working, you don’t need handouts (the P44 billion distributed under the Conditional Cash Transfer program can then be realigned to other needs), you can afford to buy your food—and better quality and type of food at that. Dried fish, sweet potato tops and rice will no longer be your limit. Supermarkets and sari-sari stores will boom as people have money to spend. The pressure comes on Philhealth to expand its coverage not only to more people but also to more services and ailments. Hospitals and clinics have to be upgraded with better equipment and facilities, and be in more places. So more doctors and nurses will be needed as medical schools expand or more are created.

Education: You need to be educated in order to do a job. It may be a basic education enough for you to understand instructions and conduct the normal tasks of life, or one so sophisticated you are capable of inventing new technologies. You need to be able to read and write for anything but the work in a rice paddy, but even there you need it so you can live to get to the paddy to work.

At the other end, tertiary colleges can be brought to international levels. At present not one Philippine college is among the top 50 in Asia, let alone the world. This is unacceptable. If parents have a job, they can afford college education for their kids. So the University of the Philippines, for example, can be properly funded (it used to be in the top 50). We can produce experts in many fields who can be world leaders in their chosen professions.

Then there’s infrastructure. You need to be able to get to school or a hospital. But, importantly, you need to be able to get to work, and it shouldn’t take an hour or two—or three (as it can for some). Businesses need to get their products and services to the market; that needs infrastructure and logistics.

So you need roads and rail and seaports, even airports, as much of business today is between separate locations. Logistics ties into infrastructure—that’s the buses, trains, ships and planes that use it. The government has spent less than half of what it should over the past 30 years, and it shows. The Philippines has some of the worst infrastructure in Asia. Major Asian economies have averaged around 5 percent of GDP annually on infrastructure spending, but the Philippines, only 2 percent-2.5 percent. The 2013 budget allots an estimated 2.5 percent of GDP for infra—not enough, but with the active inclusion of the private sector in the public-private partnership program, that 5 percent can be achieved.

But the government needs to move faster and lawyers need to back off. Too many projects are challenged in court, too often by sore losers rather than by any fundamental objections. The government itself needs more, and more experienced, personnel to put projects together and get them moving. That, in itself, is a direct job contributor.

Jobs are provided by businessmen, by people willing to risk their money and their expertise to create and run a business. To create a business they need government approval. They need to be registered at the national and local levels. The Philippines ranks appallingly in this. It takes 36 days and 16 procedures just to start a business. That puts the Philippines at No. 138 among 185 countries. At the local level, I hear innumerable complaints of the number of permits, licenses, approvals needed— and the costs (“facilitation fees” are almost unavoidable).

Business needs electricity to provide light and to power its computers, equipment, and machinery. Hospitals, households, and postharvest machinery need power. It all ties together to do one thing: Create jobs. Hence, providing reliable, stable power is an essential.

Jobs created here mean you don’t have to seek a job overseas. Filipino workers can stay home with their families. In a society that is so family-oriented, I find the separation one of the saddest results of the failure of the Philippine government to create the environment for jobs.

If the environment is improved with all these things done, foreigners will take an interest. The almost nonexistent levels ($1.8 billion average annually over the past four years vs. Thailand’s $7.6 billion) can become a thing of the past. Businesses can be created that will expand the Philippine economy, and create jobs.

You see how it all ties together. So I would like to see candidates for the Senate and the House telling us, specifically, what bills they will introduce or support that will improve all the above. And not a long wish list but no more than half a dozen issues they will actively work on. And I’d like to see local candidates tell us, specifically, what bureaucratic requirements they’ll simplify or, better, eliminate. And what deadlines they’ll set. Also what roads, schools, hospitals/clinics they’ll build.

Specifics are what we need, a TO DO list that will be done if they win.