GROWING ECONOMIC GROWTH AND INCREASING UNEMPLOYMENT

GROWING ECONOMIC GROWTH AND INCREASING UNEMPLOYMENT

 Belarmino Dabalos Saguing, Rome, ItalyEmail: bdsaguing@gmail.comMobile +39 3356880613, +39 3287838414

Two contrasting informations on economic growth:

Manila’s National Statistical Coordination Board published data showing that the economy had grown an extremely impressive 7.8% year on year in the first three months of 2013.v (News item).
The unemployment rate is the highest since April 2010, when it stood at 8%. The April jobless rate compares with the 7.1% jobless rate in January. There were 3.09 million unemployed in the Philippines as of April, up from 2.89 million in January. (News item)

What caused this two opposing developments? According to a government agency NEDA, the drop in employment is due to the extreme weather condition.

But why blame it to the weather, the agricultural sector, for many decades now, has been stunted chronically. It cannot be the sole cause of the problem. The government make itself ridiculous to blame the poor state of agriculture on the latter alone. It is more probable that thev real cause of the problem is that the current and past administration has modeled our economy as ‘export oriented’. No genuine moves has been done in modernization of the agricultural sector to achieve food independence and also to provide a basis for developing our local industries, reducing it to a mere provider of food products for foreign supermarkets and tables. Any adverse effect by extreme weather condition has just worsened the situation.

 The interrelated fields of ‘labor export’ and ‘business process outsourcing’ are aggressively pushed while programs for agricultural modernization, such as genuine agrarian reform, ceasation of cheap agricultural imports, and sufficient funding of support services such as irrigation, have been ignored.

Quoting Anakbayan’s Vencer Crisostomo,“The few farmers lucky enough to own the land they are tilling become more vulnerable to changes in the weather because of the lack of State support. For example, those without access to irrigation are at the mercy of whether it rains regularly or not. Even if they manage to successfully harvest their crops, they then have to contend with cheaper imports being dumped in the Philippines. What is Aquino doing about this?”

Mr. President, wake up! The nation’s stomach and your reputation is at stake!