WHY IS AMERICA TRUSTED? JUST FOLLOW THE MONEY AND BALIKBAYAN BOXES

DILIP Ratha’s personal story is one of the most awe-inspiring stories of global migration. He came to the Migration Desk of the World Bank from an Indian village so poor that the absence of running water and electricity was a minor concern. Mothers had to sell their kids for a few dollars to get by. His native language has no written script. After earning a PhD from the Indian Statistical Institute, Ratha moved to the United States, the first in his village to do so.

Working on migration and development issues at the World Bank, starting in the early 1990s, Ratha initiated the rigorous statistical record-keeping of remittances on a global scale, then lowly regarded, even by most highly credentialed development economists. In 2003, he delivered a virtual statistical bombshell on how the world failed to do the elementary thing of accurately counting the global remittances from migrants and overseas workers. One of his findings: the Philippines, instead of just receiving $122 million — which was officially the acknowledged total amount of remittances then — received $6.2 billion or 51 times the officially recorded amount.

Another finding: global remittances were three times the size of overseas foreign aid.

“Dilip is the person who put remittances on the map,” Kathleen Newland, founder of the Washingtonbased Migration Policy Institute, was quoted as saying.

Since then, remittances have been recorded with pinpoint accuracy, with the Migration Desk of the World Bank (WB) as the most reliable source. Last year, remittances to the Philippines, according to the WB figures, was $33.8 billion (the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas tally was more than $32 billion). More than 30 percent of that total was sent from the United States, which has been the most consistent, and the biggest sender, of overseas remittances.

There were years when the US remittances was more than the total of the nine other major senders in the Top 10 combined. There is always a $6-billion to $7-billion difference between the remittance level of top-sending US and the next big sender, Saudi Arabia.

The Philippines has been consistently the fourth biggest receiver of hard currency remittances, after India, China and Mexico.

The big amount of money coming from the US, and the sheer volume of people benefiting from the remittances, is the major reason why the US remains the “most trusted” country after the “umbilical cord” that for decades tied the Philippines to the US had been severed, after the US military bases exited the Philippines for good and after the US has scaled down on its global commitments.

The late Blas Ople used to describe the US in these favorable terms: chief armorer, main cultural mentor and top giver of aid. That arrangement no longer holds. Today, the

US is identified as the biggest source of foreign remittances. And in this day and age, that appears to be weightier than cultural mentorship.

“Trust” in a foreign country has to have a solid grounding, a parameter that is measurable and right now nothing can rival the volume and sustained pace of the remittances from the US. And there is another big thing that complements the substantial and sustained dollar remittances — the “box.” Check the volume of balikbayan boxes bound for the Philippines after the “Black Friday” sales. “Deluge” may be the understated word to describe the post-Black Friday boxes bound for the Philippines.

Trust can’t spring from, can’t be influenced rather, by government policy. The Duterte administration’s “pivot to China” has yet to morph into a decent level of “trust” for China. On a government-to-government level, China is the most trusted. In the hearts and minds of most Filipinos, the opposite is true.

On trust, it is not the official government but the people who vest trust. The official State cannot legislate trust.

The Duterte administration has two wish lists on China. First, the day will come when that elusive “trust” will be vested by the people on China. Second. a day will come when China will become the Philippines’ “role model” in easing poverty.

In the current generation and the next, nothing of that sort will take place. Just a routine accounting on what China “exports” to other countries, the Philippines included, will not change hearts and minds. This is based on hard realities — and sentiments — at the ground level.

The “Hog Belt” in my region is about to be wiped out by the brutal wages of the lethal African swine fever (ASF). The Hog Belt in my region is a critical component of the P250-billion hog industry, the eighth largest in the world. To say that the ASF has wreaked havoc on the country’s hog industry is perhaps the understatement of the year.

The ASF, if you trace the genesis of the epidemic, was introduced into the country by tainted pork imports from China.

Even in the dying days of the 20th century, culls (sows retired after five birthing cycles) never went down to P20 per kilogram. Fear of the ASF forced the major commercial farms in my region to unload ASFfree fatteners at P70 per kilogram (kg) and culls at P20 per kg three weeks ago. Today, even with the ASF-free certification of major hogproducing regions, farm gate has not moved up beyond P80 per kg — which means a loss of 2,500 per fattener sold — and the government takes that cavalierly.

Before the tainted meat that caused the spread of the ASF, the major “export” from China was shabu.

And the Philippine offshore gaming operations, the dregs from the China’s work force, which are shipped to the Philippines because gambling is not allowed there.

Read the long-form journalism that exposed how China sends its best and brightest to countries like the US and sends its junk to Third World countries like the Philippines. You will weep.