That sham ‘golden age’

Numbers don’t lie. This is what’s good in looking at an administration’s economic performance. There are, for instance, hard facts and figures to assess if indeed the regime of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos (from his election in 1965 to his ouster in 1986) was the golden age of the Philippine economy, as some claim.

The economy is measured by the gross domestic product (GDP), the total value of goods produced and services rendered in the local economy for a given period.

After the declaration of martial law in 1972, GDP growth reached a record 8.92 percent in 1973 and 8.81 percent in 1976.

However, the country’s worst recession also happened during the Marcos period, when GDP shrank by also a record 7.3 percent in 1984 and 1985, the final years of the dictatorial regime.

Inflation, the rate of increase in the prices of essential goods and services, was at single digits when Marcos came to power in 1966.

But from a low of 2 percent in 1968, inflation shot up to 21 percent in 1971 (due mainly to a global oil crisis that year).

By 1974, inflation had surged to 34.2 percent.

It went back to manageable levels the following years, but rose to double-digit levels in 1979 (17.5 percent) and peaked at 50.3 percent (yes, 50.3 percent) in 1984—considered one of the worst years for the economy.

The economy’s performance globally was no different. The Marcos regime went on a borrowing binge after the declaration of martial law to the early 1980s, because interest rates were low and money especially from oil-rich Middle East countries was abundant after oil prices surged in the early 1970s.

From $600 million in 1965, the Philippines’ external debt had ballooned to $26 billion when he was ousted in 1986.

The worst part was that the Philippines had to default in the payment of its loans, forcing the country to work out a bailout program in 1983 with the International Monetary Fund that called for extreme austerity measures.

The exchange rate mirrored the ill-advised debt-driven economic program. From P3.90 to $1 in 1965, the local currency’s value against the greenback slipped to P6.78 in 1972, P8.20 in 1981, then to P14 by October 1983, and to P19.03 in December 1985.

The same was the case for the labor picture. Unemployment fell sharply to 4 percent in 1975 from 7.2 percent in 1965, but got worse as the economy reeled from a global crisis induced by surging crude oil prices. By 1985, unemployment had risen to 12.6 percent. This exacerbated poverty.

According to the official Family Income and Expenditure Survey conducted from 1965 to 1985, poverty incidence in the Philippines rose from 11 percent in 1965 to 18.9 percent in 1985.

But there are, of course, those who benefited from the Marcos years — the cronies who got favors from that regime to expand their business empires. Some of them even hid the Marcoses’ ownership of billions of pesos worth of assets, which became the subject of recovery efforts by the Presidential Commission on Good Government after the dictator’s ouster in 1986.

It was the discontent caused by this economic pillage and mismanagement, on top of the violence, abuse and political repression inflicted on the people, that led to the protests and opposition to the Marcos regime that eventually culminated in what we celebrate today as the People Power Revolution of February 1986.

Marcos promised economic development anchored mainly on 11 major industrial projects (many of which did not push through or were mothballed, such as the corruption-wracked Bataan Nuclear Power Plant).

However, many of the projects and programs in his economic development plan were financed by debt. When the global economy turned for the worse and interest rates abroad rose, the Philippines was plunged in a severe debt crisis that led to spiraling inflation and poverty.

The people’s restiveness was further fueled by the assassination of former senator Benigno Aquino Jr. in 1983. And the rest, as they say, is history.

How does one believe, then, that the Marcos years were the golden age of the Philippine economy?

There is no basis for it. Anyone who peddles that myth — and there are many of them today — is either ignorant, lying or willfully engaged in pernicious historical whitewashing.