NEDA: Secession will plunge GDP
For those wanting to put up a business — whether foreign or local — they’re always looking to the future, so that they would be in a wait-and-see mode.
The National Economic and Development Authority, or NEDA, said the country’s economic output would drop should Mindanao successfully secede from the rest of the country.
In a forum, NEDA Undersecretary Rosemarie Edillon said Mindanao’s contribution to the country’s gross domestic product is 16 percent.
She said other economic challenges could arise from secession, including higher business costs.
“We also do not want a situation where, when we go to Mindanao, we need to secure a visa,” she added.
She said job opportunities and options for goods and services in the country would diminish as secession would threaten investors’ business plans.
“For those wanting to put up a business — whether foreigner or local — they’re always looking to the future so that they would be in a wait-and-see mode,” she said.
Former President Rodrigo Duterte, who called for Mindanao’s secession from the Philippines, said the region would be better off as an independent state after successive administrations had failed to alleviate poverty there over the years.
Edillon echoed President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s recent remark that a secession is “doomed to fail.”
“Just like the President said, it’s doomed to fail. You need popular support. What is the economic rationale for this? It needs to be discussed thoroughly,” she said.
Marcos also said secession would be a “grave violation of the Constitution.”
Don’t cut off Mindanao
Members of the House of Representatives, meanwhile, called on Duterte and Davao del Norte Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez to stop talking about severing Mindanao from the rest of the country.
“The former president, former speaker, and their followers should stop any talk and any plan, if there is one, to secede. President Marcos has categorically stated that he would not permit our national territory to be reduced even one square inch, and he would not allow even an iota of a suggestion of its breaking apart,” said Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez, a Mindanaoan.
Marcos on Thursday raised strong objection to Duterte and Alvarez’s plan to separate Mindanao from the Philippines, saying it is “doomed to fail, for it is anchored on a false premise.”
Last week, ex-president Duterte threatened to separate Mindanao from the rest of the country over his and Marcos’s divergent positions on amending the Constitution, which the former leader suspects would only perpetuate Marcos in power.