Bulatlat

The Filipino people are barely able to cope with weekly oil price hikes, increasing prices of rice, pork, food, and groceries, worsening unemployment, high tuition and costs of education, and impending fare hikes when Typhoon Frank wreaked havoc on the country.

BY BENJIE OLIVEROS
ANALYSIS
Bulatlat
Vol.VIII, No, 21, June 29-July 5, 2008

The Filipino people are barely able to cope with weekly oil price hikes, which has jumped by almost P14 per liter for diesel and P15 for unleaded gasoline, increasing prices of rice, which has risen by 32 percent, pork, food, which jumped 14 percent, and groceries, worsening unemployment and underemployment, high tuition and costs of education, and impending fare hikes when Typhoon Frank wreaked havoc on the country.  And now we are in the midst of confronting another maritime disaster: the sinking of MV Princess of the Stars with 124 confirmed dead, 56 survivors, and majority of the 862 passengers and crew in the manifest still missing.  It could still be worse considering that shipping companies routinely overload their decrepit ships to maximize profits.  

June 25, another disaster was reported in the news: the Philippines was adjudged by the World Bank, in its 2008 Worldwide Governance Indicators, as having the worst corruption incidence among East Asia’s ten largest economies.  The country is among the bottom 22 percent in the world in terms of perceived corruption incidence.  

As if that was not enough, on June 26, the country was mentioned by HSBC as the weakest Asian economy after Vietnam and the most vulnerable to rising prices and global economic slowdown.  It cited the ballooning trade deficit and the country’s inability to finance it as a major problem.  

The National Statistical Coordination Board recorded a trade deficit of P41.3 billion for the 1st quarter of 2008.  The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (Central Bank of the Philippines) projects the trade deficit for the year to reach $11 billion, which could even be worse given the economic slowdown in the US, the top export destination of the country. As it is, the projected trade deficit for the year is more than double the $5.05 trade deficit in 2007, when the Arroyo government was trumpeting a supposed “unprecedented growth.” The trade deficit in 2006 was $4.3 billion, $6.1 billion in 2005, and $4.35 billion in 2004.  The country has actually incurred a trade deficit in most of the last 18 years, except in 1999 and 2000.

Add to this the culpability of the Arroyo government and the Armed Forces of the Philippines in the numerous, unresolved cases of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances, the unresolved killings and kidnapping of journalists, and the still questionable mandate of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and we probably have the worse administration and the most disastrous period in the country after the Marcos dictatorship.   

We are being plagued by natural disasters, and more are yet to come; we are experiencing the destruction of the people’s livelihood amid an economic disaster; and we are experiencing a crisis in governance that is threatening to implode if the country’s problems would remain unabated.  

Perhaps the worse is yet to come, if the Filipino people would not act collectively and decisively to confront these problems now. Bulatlat