‘Rodying’ high
In this modern world, diplomacy is principally about facilitating trade and commerce. Some of the most forward-looking countries have, in fact, merged their ministries of foreign affairs and trade. Diplomats and trade representatives, after all, are beginning to play redundant roles.
For this reason, heads of state coming home from foreign travel are expected to detail before their home constituencies trade and investment gains they have won. Nowhere is the expectation for bringing home the bacon more emphatic than in the Philippines. Our public tends to believe that an official journey is a waste of money unless investments are won, new trade relationships opened and new concessions inked.
There is nearly a standard format for the arrival statements of Filipino presidents returning from state visits. They detail the economic benefits achieved by the just concluded mission. Foreign visits by Filipino presidents are nearly always trade and investment missions and only occasionally alliance-building exercises. Our citizens expect a dollars-and-cents inventory of what was gained from a state visit.
Goodwill does not count in these arrival statements. It is unquantifiable. It does not suggest any immediate contribution to our national goals.
When President Rodrigo Duterte returned from China, he reported about $24 billion worth of Chinese assistance, grants, joint ventures and soft loans. Just a week later, returning from Tokyo, the President reported about $19 billion in Japanese assistance. These numbers do not yet include private businesses that may be initiated over the next year or two. Those investments could vastly overshadow the official assistance reported. The private sector figures could add up to well over $40 billion.
Just to underscore these numbers: The new investments, grants, material assistance such as ships for our Coast Guard and soft loans add up to a number larger than our total outstanding national debt. This volume of assistance will be a big boost for our economy. It will help assure we meet the goal of sustaining a GDP expansion of at least 7 percent into the medium term.
To say that the President’s two trips in two weeks were exercises in productive diplomacy will be an understatement. No previous Filipino president achieved such astounding gains from embarking on a foreign mission.
And this is just for starters. Next on President Duterte’s schedule is a visit to Malaysia, a staunch Asean partner and a rising investor in the Philippine market. We can expect more bacon to be brought home.
Remember that President Duterte is just four months in office. While some may disagree with his choice of words or his fashion sense, they will have to grudgingly admit we have a leader tireless in winning support for his administration’s goal of dramatically bringing down the volume of poverty afflicting our society. The foreign visits are only one weapon in a vast arsenal supporting our antipoverty strategy.
Quite happily, the Philippine Statistics Authority reported last week that our poverty rate has climbed down dramatically from 25 percent to 21 percent by the latest count. The 10-point program of the Duterte administration aims to bring down the poverty rate to only 17 percent by 2022. That now seems too easy a target. Our economic managers are now aiming to lift 1.5 million Filipinos out of poverty in the next few years through fiscal and economic reforms. If that is achieved, six years of the Duterte administration should effectively halve the poverty volume.
At the end of six years, our people should feel what inclusive growth really means. Diplomacy will play an important role in achieving that ambitious goal.
In the next two to three years, the deals sealed in Beijing and Tokyo the past two weeks will bring visible improvement to our infrastructures. We need to frantically close the infra gap plaguing our economy and inhibiting our growth potential. International cooperation in the form of investments, technology and human expertise will help move us forward in closing the infra gap.
Indeed under this administration, we are “Rodying” high.
