WHAT GRADES DO WE GIVE NOYNOY THIS YEAR?

WHAT GRADES DO WE GIVE NOYNOY THIS YEAR?

We still do not have a preview of this year’s SONA, but looking at the trends, we can surmise the Pres. Noynoy Aquino will be dwelling in his so.called Aquinomics, meaning hid recent performance and ‘achivements’ like economic growth, strengthening of our money, etc. which are meaningless to the Filipinos as it never reached them, giving only a semblance of development.

In what factors do we measure the Aquino administration? Of course we measure it against his 2010 election campaign promises to the Filipino people, the true sovereign of the nation. His campaign platform for government orbits on “A national leadership in need of ‘Transformational Change’” covering key economic issues. It revolves basically on five elements of the platform were jobs, anti-poverty programs, social services, natural resources and overall economic program.

But alas! As the SONA day nears, we still do not see progress under him, if any, The progress which the president fondly recite is nothing more than exclusionary growth.

The domestic jobs crisis remain unsolved. The administration has reportd over one million jobs created in April 2012 but this aggregate numbers veils a drastic deterioration in the quality of jobs. The full-time workers actually fell by 1.6 million and was only compensated for by a much larger 2.5 million increase in the number of part-time workers which, obviously, is conventionally low-paying, precarious and without benefits.

As a result part-time work now accounts for over four out of ten (43%) jobs in the economy or 16.2 million out of 37.8 million employed.

IBON estimates on National Statistics Office (NSO) data, the total number of unemployed and underemployed Filipinos increased by 780,000 in the last two years from 10.9 million in April 2010 to 11.7 million in April 2012 – consisting of 4.4 million unemployed and 7.3 million underemployed. The unemployment rate over the same period fell from 11.4% to 10.3% but this was more than offset by rising underemployment which rose from 17.8% to 19.3 percent. The unemployed and underemployed comprised 27.7% (11.5 million) of the labor force in 2011 which is marginally higher than the 27.6% (11.2 million) in 2010 but significantly higher than the 26.4% (8.7 million) in 2001. These trends remain even if official NSO data that underreports unemployment is used.*

Wages remain too low for decent living as a result. The mandated minimum wage of Php446 in May 2012 is just 44% of the Php1,017 family living wage (FLW). This wage gap is even greater than a decade ago, in May 2002, when the minimum wage was 53% of the FLW. As it is the real wage of wages that workers actually received was virtually unchanged between July 2010 (Php308) and July 2011 (Php307, taking inflation into account).*

The most effective and sustainable anti-poverty measure is an economy that creates good quality jobs providing decent incomes, something that is not happening. The government economic policies are not geared in building genuinely Filipino industry and developing domestic agriculture – and consequently generating jobs – but rather about providing foreigners cheap Filipino labor and natural resources. This is the fatal error of an economic program fixated on overseas work, business process outsourcing (BPOs) and mining.

Even government’s anti-poverty conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), is a massive dole-out scheme that alleviates poverty only partially and temporarily. Dole outs are not the solution.

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The present administration continues to neglect education, health and housing. National government spending on education has fallen from a peak of 4.0% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1998 to 2.7% in 2011. The Philippine government spends only the equivalent of 2% of gross national product (GNP) on education, lagging behind Malaysia, Indonesia and developed countries for primary education. There is a shortage of 132,483 teachers, 97,685 classrooms, 865,000 chairs, and 153,709 water and sanitation facilities for school year 2012-2013. Some 126 million textbooks are also needed.

The administration’s thrust for so-called universal health care through PhilHealth is a flawed strategy for ensuring affordable and accessible health services for the people. Private hospitals and public hospitals run along private sector lines means increasing fees for treatment and confinement. Yet the administration plans to reduce and eventually outright remove budget support for public hospitals even as more expensive private hospitals already comprise six out of ten hospitals in the country. The government’s budget for PhilHealth is increasingly then, in effect, a subsidy for private hospitals.

PhilHealth benefits are also insufficient and patients will still keep paying large sums from their own pockets. In 2008, PhilHealth covered some 40% of families yet only 7% of total health spending in the country, leaving 58% of health expenses out-of-pocket. Out-of-pocket expenses will likely still be unacceptably high even if coverage increases to the projected 80% of Filipinos.*

The total estimated housing backlog by 2013 is 3,551,431 housing which is estimated to reach 5,732,454 by 2016. Yet according to the latest Philippine Development Plan (PDP) the government’s housing target is only 1,377,612 units as of 2013 or just 39% of the backlog.

The Aquino administration is still pushing for mining liberalization as long as it has a greater share of revenues from the sector. The newly released Executive Order (EO) 79 seeks to facilitate foreign mining investment in the country procedurally and by neutralizing local government opposition as this EO as insufficient for preventing the continued destruction of the environment. The EO also does not address the problem of raw Filipino mineral resources being used by foreign economies instead of for domestic industry and national development. The expected increase in revenue from this field did nopt materialize. Only foreign corporations are the ones who were actually benifitted by the EO

The Aquino has encouraged the profits of a few letting  the needs of tens of millions of Filipinos remain inrealized. In contrast to the conditions of most Filipinos who remain poor, the wealth of an elite few and corporate profits have continued to soar.

The government sponsored Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in infrastructure, health, education and housing in such a way that private and especially foreign investors are ensured their profits either through high user fees, so-called regulatory risk guarantees, or both. The local partners will largely be the same big business oligarchs that have cornered large energy, telecommunications, transport and water deals for decades: Ayala, Lopez, Pangilinan, Razon, Aboitiz, Cojuangco/Ang and Consunji.

Agrarian reform is vital for rural development. Yet the Aquino administration has the worst performance of land distribution by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) of any post-Marcos government.

Pnoy’s ‘straight path’ is a dark path for the majority of Filipinos who was never reached by the ‘progress’ if Aquinomics

*  from Bulatlat.com SONA 2012: Broken contract, broken record?