In the face of its glaring failures, the Macapagal-Arroyo administration continues to pursue the very same bankrupt economic policies that caused these in the first place

By IBON Foundation
Posted by Bulatlat
Vol. VII, No. 24, July 22-28, 2007

Undoubtedly, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will use the state of the nation address (SONA) to promote her achievements. Macapagal-Arroyo would likely claim that her greatest achievement and her legacy is to set the Philippines well along the road to progress and prosperity. To buttress her claims she would certainly cite the familiar rosy economic indicators that she has consistently used to try and silence her critics: the fastest quarterly growth rate in nearly two decades, stock market indices soaring to all-time highs, record international reserves, the “strengthening” of the peso and steady increases in foreign investments.

However, these claims will not hold up to even the most cursory scrutiny. The scores of homeless people living on the streets and sidewalks of Manila already prove widespread poverty and joblessness despite Malacañang’s claims that poverty has decreased. The more than 3,000 Filipinos who leave the country every day to seek work abroad belie the government’s claim that it has generated more than 800,000 jobs a year since Macapagal-Arroyo assumed office in 2001.

Yet, even in the face of its glaring failures, the Macapagal-Arroyo administration continues to pursue the very same bankrupt economic policies that caused these in the first place. In fact, it promises to pursue these policies even more aggressively and apply them to more areas of the economy.

Behind ‘Economic Growth’

One of the key economic indicators that the Macapagal-Arroyo administration undoubtedly will be hyping is the country’s continuous economic growth. According to Sec. Ricardo Saludo, the country has enjoyed 25 consecutive quarters of growth in the gross domestic product (GDP). The latter actually grew by 6.9 percent in the first quarter of 2007, supposedly the highest in 17 years.

But the GDP merely tracks the continued erosion of the country’s productive sectors. The share of the manufacturing sector has been steadily falling, from 25.7 percent of total domestic output in 1980 to 23 percent last year. Over the same period, agriculture fell from 25 percent of GDP to 14 percent.

Even if the economic growth could be taken at face value, it remains meaningless to the millions of poor Filipinos to whom the benefits have not “trickled down.” IBON estimates that some 65 million Filipinos or around 80 percent of the total population struggle to survive on the equivalent of P96 ($2.14, based on an exchange rate of P44.80 per US dollar) or less per day. This is substantially higher than the Macapagal-Arroyo administration’s official poverty incidence figure of 24 million Filipinos.

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