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The National Socio-Economic Summit of 2001:
A Deceit with a Purpose

The summit is deceitful about the true state of the people and the real roots of the crisis of poverty. But more, it is deceit with a purpose: to justify the continued implementation of the policies of globalization that have brought more misery to Filipinos.

BY REP. SATUR OCAMPO, Bayan Muna
Bulatlat.com

It's a good idea, the government sitting down with the people to genuinely thresh out what to do in the face of crisis. Too bad the government doesn't really care for it. The National Socio-Economic Summit of 2001 is little more than an elaborate and expensive public relations gimmick to project optimism, goodwill and unity-an obscene exercise in these times of real crisis.

It is deceitful about the true state of the people and the real roots of the crisis of poverty. But more, it is deceit with a purpose: to justify the continued implementation of the very policies of globalization that have brought such misery to the Filipino people.

Rarely in the past decades have the prospects for the economy and the people been so dire. If the government were genuinely concerned the least it could do is be honest about the situation. But the Arroyo administration apparently thinks that sheer denial, like a put-on smile, is enough to make things better. For the growing millions of poor, sick, hungry and ill-educated, it is callousness of the highest order.

Statistics don't lie, liars do

The government has recently bragged about two things: creating two million jobs and the country having among the highest growth rates in Southeast Asia. But these are half-truths.

The number of employed did increase by 2.2 million between July 2000 and July 2001, bringing the July 2001 unemployment rate down to 10.1% from 11.2% last year. But 739,000 of this increase was in the number of unpaid family workers which went up 24.1% to 3.8 million in July 2001. A further 1.2 million was in the number of own-account workers-overwhelmingly irregular and low-earning work-and only the balance was in wage and salary workers.

Note, however, that there was a steep 757,000 drop in the number of full-time workers while the number of part-time workers increased by a massive 34.6% or by 2.8 million. With 10.9 million workers, part-time jobs now take up a huge 37.2% of total employment. The number of unemployed may have decreased slightly, to 3.3 million from 3.4 million last year, but what sort of jobs were really created?

After April's historic high of 4.5 million unemployed, it would be no wonder that people would be scrambling to scrounge a living any which way-pushing labor force participation rates up and giving them that one hour of "work" in the past week that qualifies them as "employed." The October results have yet to be released but reports are that 370 workers a day were laid off or otherwise displaced in the first ten months of the year for a total of 111,080 workers so far.

All of which is consistent with how there were 31.3 million poor Filipinos last year-using the absurdly low official poverty line of PhP13,916 per person per year, of which 16.5 million were even below the food threshold. In 2000 there were 3.5 million jobless and 6.0 million underemployed; adding the 8.3 million Filipinos forced to go overseas for work, this means the economy isn't able to provide sufficient livelihoods for some 42% of the labor force.

It is also true that 2.9% growth rate in gross domestic product (GDP) in the third quarter is among the highest in Asia.

Differences in method aside, the country's 40.0% official poverty incidence in 2000 is the highest in Southeast Asia, higher than in Malaysia (8.0% in 1998), Thailand (12.9% in 1998) and Indonesia (18.2% in 1999). Likewise with last year's 14-year high 11.2 % unemployment rate which is so far from that in Malaysia (3.1%), Thailand (3.6%) and Indonesia (6.1%) and Sri Lanka (7.7%). There is no reason to expect these to have changed much.

And apart from having the smallest industrial sector, the country's industrial growth rate of 3.6% in 2000 was the lowest compared to Thailand (5.2%), Indonesia (5.5%), Vietnam (9.7%) and Malaysia (14.7%). Last year's inflation rate of 4.4% was second only to Indonesia (9.3%) and higher than in Thailand (1.6%), Malaysia (1.5%), and Vietnam (negative 1.7%). These trends had been well-established in the 1990s.

Globalization's dismal record

None of this is due to any post-September 11 aftershocks even if the condemnable attacks probably did hasten the onset of inevitable global recession. Perhaps the country's economic managers merely succumbed to the US-instigated anti-terrorist hysteria. Or, worse, maybe they truly do believe what they say in summit documents: that the most urgent need is to respond to "challenges brought about by the September 11 terrorist attacks."

Either way, the government is persisting with the very policies that have kept the country in chronic crisis. The dismal record of just the past decade of rabid globalization is unambiguous.

The country has certainly become more "globalized," as economic managers and comprador business elites proudly boast. Trade jumped to 101.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1996-2000 from 60.9% in 1986-90; exports alone leapt to 45.7% of GDP from 29.1%. Foreign investments increased 166% between the two periods, from US$ 2.58 billion in 1986-90 to US$ 6.86 billion in 1996-2000.

But exports, foreign investments and even enclave economic zone employment aren't development ends in themselves. Indeed, despite all the gloating about "globalizing," there are more poor and unemployed Filipinos than ever before.

Real per capita GDP is at the levels of the early 1980s. According to the 1998 nationwide survey of the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI), eight out of every 10 Filipino children are underweight. Even the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) ranked the Philippines among the top 10 countries with malnourished children aged below five years.

Nor has there been any real change in the country's industrial and agricultural backwardness. The share of manufacturing in national output has fallen from 25.4% in 1990 to 23.4% in 2000, which is even less than the 24.5% share in 1960. The share of manufacturing employment to total employment hardly changed, from 8.9% to 9.0%; compared to 12% in 1960. Industry remains stagnant and with low technology and value-added.

Agricultural losses

Agricultural performance has been worse. The sector lost over a million jobs between 1994 and 2000, increasing rural poverty by 690,000 families. Between 1990-94 and 1995-99, rice imports increased by 540%, corn by 320%, poultry by 580%, beef by 230%, pork by 120% and fish by 45% turning a US$ 1.3 billion trade surplus into a US$ 3.5 billion deficit.

Devastated by competition from cheap imports, government neglect, and land and crop conversion, average annual growth in the last twenty years was just 1.5%, far below the 4.2% of the twenty years before it. Post-liberalization rates couldn't even keep pace with population growth and agricultural and crops production per capita today is lower than at the end of the 1970s.

Landlessness which is such fertile ground for revolutionary struggles in the countryside remains widespread: 6% of families still own and control over 60% of total agricultural land. After 13 years of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), the government has only achieved 68% of its already lowered target of 8.1 million hectares-not yet taking into consideration mounting reports of reversals and land reconcentration. Most of the land distributed were non-private agricultural lands where the government did not yet have to deal with its bases of landlord support.

The country's foreign debt stock grew 70.3% from US$ 30.6 billion in 1990 to US$ 52.1 in 2000, almost double the increase from the decade earlier. By last year the foreign debt was 78.8% of GDP, fast approaching levels during the mid-1980s. Meanwhile the exchange rate fell 55.1% from PhP 28.50 to PhP 44.20 to the US$ 1; the current rate hovers around PhP 52.00 to the US$ 1. And the country's chronic trade deficits are nowhere near being resolved.

Only two ways about it

If the administration has its way, things will only get worse. Not only does the summit not reassess the failed globalization tack of old, it even perversely uses the worsening crisis it spawned as an excuse for more of the same.

Under the sway of ideological dogma, and no small measure of economic and political-self-interest, the administration is determined to push for trade and investment liberalization, albeit with feigned compassion through safety nets and other palliatives. The most critical development issues facing the country aren't tackled.

There is no push for genuine agrarian reform that gives the tillers land and the means and opportunity to make these productive; the monopoly of countryside elites over rural economic and political power is untouched. These are the first steps to generating, mobilizing and using domestic resources to meet the people's needs.

There is no drive for national industrialization. A modern and diversified economy with a more independent financial and technological base has to be built. Instead, industrial policy remains peculiarly obsessed with import-intensive enclave production for export. Equally perversely, the fixation on attracting foreign investment at any cost means that they have been coming in on terms of little employment, technological or financial benefit for the country.

The country needs economic policies that foster national economic self-reliance and independence, and are for the good of the Filipino people. More than ever, economic policies should stop being determined mainly by what profits foreign monopoly capital and domestic elites. If the government could do these then all the tinkering proposed by the summit, the so-called "doables," would not be needed. If it can't, then no amount of tinkering will be good enough.

So it is with the anti-people economics of the summit. The government's drift towards rising fascism and bad governance are also condemnable but they are another story.

This coming Christmas will be gloomy and lacking in cheer for the majority Filipino people. And for so long as governments are as retrogressive as the country has always had, there will be many more such Christmases to come. The hope, rather, lies with the people-in their organizations and in the social movement that struggles for the more truly liberating and democratic alternative. Bulatlat.com

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