Denials won’t solve problem

ON DISTANT SHORE
By Val G. Abelgas 

Looking north as you are driving on the South Luzon Expressway near the Alabang Exit, you’d think you are in a highly progressive country, with skyscrapers dotting the skyline of Metro Manila, from Manila on the left side through Pasig and Mandaluyong in the middle and Makati on the right side.

Almost anywhere you go in Metro Manila, you’d see condominiums – both occupied and under construction – jutting into the sky and huge malls crowded with people. First class restaurants and classy retail stores abound in spanking new urban centers such as The Fort, Global City, Rockwell, Eastwood City and many more.

Plush subdivisions have sprouted in areas where wild grass and rice plantations used to be, such as in Dasmarinas, Cavite and Santa Rosa, Laguna. Casinos and first-class hotels are all over. Flashy SUVs and luxury cars compete for the crowded lanes with jeepneys, buses and taxis.

Metro Manila just isn’t what it used to be about two decades ago. It’s fast becoming like Hongkong where skyscrapers abound for lack of space. It’s a city on the go, a picture of affluence and progress.

Seeing all these signs of progress, you remember all the good news about the Philippine economy that you read in online Manila publications every single day. The world’s biggest financial organizations – Moody’s, Standard & Poor, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and major international banks – all predict a 6.5 to 7 percent growth for the country’s economy this year, with Moody’s even calling the Philippines a “rising star” and S&P upgrading the country’s credit rating. A recent report by S&P even described the Philippine peso as the third best performing currency in the world, next only to the Chinese renminbi and the Singapore dollar.

Finally, you say to yourself, the country whose economy used to be second only to Japan in Asia in the 60s but in recent decades called the “sick man of Asia,” has finally caught up with the tiger economies of its neighbors Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.

A family living under a bridge.

And then you drive into the inner city and find a contrasting sight — squatter shanties with rusty roofs held together by old tires and hollow blocks and walls of discarded plywood and tin sheets; families living on carts under stinky bridges; almost naked street children begging for alms; famished kids scavenging for food in garbage cans; makeshift shelters jutting out of walls.

The stark contrast between those modern skyscrapers and fancy restaurants on one hand and the sorry state of those squatter shanties on the other reflects the confusion that the conflicting reports on economic growth and the poverty situation in the country bring. Beyond the façade of progress lies the stark reality of poverty. Amid the glowing reports of economic growth is the unflattering fact that one out of four Filipinos remain poor and hungry. And that despite the rising strength of the peso, the relatively rapid growth in GDP, record stock market gains, and the rise of condominiums and other signs of affluence, the government has not made a dent on its drive against poverty.

Last week, the Aquino administration was jolted from its lofty dreams by a report from the National Census Statistics Board (NCSB) that in July 2012, the Philippine poverty rate was at 27.9 percent, which is practically unchanged from the 2006 and 2009 data. Families forced to live on less than P7,821 a month (for a family of five) are considered poor, according to the government’s poverty threshold.

A report by the Asian Development Bank a few years ago said that about 12 million Filipinos were trapped in extreme poverty and surviving on less than P56 a day, while an IMF country report said that 4 in 10 Filipinos earned two dollars a day or less.

Confronted with the government report, President Aquino, as usual, was in state of denial, and raised doubts on the finding, saying that the agency made a mistake in a 2009 population survey. “I have my doubts. Did they not make a wrong report on the population?” Aquino said, referring to an error by the National Statistics Office in which the wrong population data was used for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in 2009.

The NCSB stood by its report, adding that it was not the NCSB, but the NSO that made the mistake the President was alluding to. Socio-Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan, who released the report, paid the price for the embarrassing report when he was removed from the roster of government officials joining Aquino in the ASEAN summit in Brunei.

That was not the first time Balisacan raised the alarm on poverty. In February, Balisacan had told congressmen that despite the robust economic expansion last year, the rising inequality between the rich and the poor remains a problem. Balisacan was reacting to a report made by the Social Watch Philippines and the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement, in coordination with the United Nations, which stated that the country’s poverty situation was worse than in 2000 when it started the Millennium Development Goals that the UN designed to eliminate poverty.

Aquino would have avoided criticisms had he just assured the people that the government is doing its best to reduce poverty and that the steady economic growth would eventually trickle down to the masses. But he had to dispute a government report because it was not to his liking.

Obviously, Aquino’s poverty alleviation program, the Conditional Cash Transfer, has not improved the lives of the majority of the people and that the economic gains made under his administration has not been felt by the masses. Despite the robust 6.6-percent economic growth, unemployment remains unchanged at 7.1 percent in January, from 7.2 percent a year ago. The number of unemployed and underemployed is estimated at 10 million.

The SWP-PRRM report stressed that “growth benefited a few and excluded so many, thereby widening the rich-poor gap even more.” While the improved economy made the rich richer as evidenced by the growing number of billionaires and multi-millionaires, it has also made the poor even poorer.

On account of the NSCB report, which confirmed the SWP and PRRM February report, the Aquino administration may have to review its economic program to focus on employment generation. Apparently, the robust growth failed to generate the jobs because it was fueled mostly by the continued increase in remittance from overseas workers and the increased consumer spending generated by these remittances.

Many economic experts believe that the country should develop industries that could generate more jobs, such as manufacturing, tourism, information technology, agribusiness and mining.

The bottom line is that President Aquino should come out of his state of denial and face the fact that more has to be done to reduce poverty. He should make good his campaign promise that “Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap.” As it stands now, “marami pa ring corrupt at marami pa ring mahirap.”

(valabelgas@aol.com)