Fault finding
Amid doomsday scenarios painted by rabid anti-Duterte and anti-Martial Law people, we can learn a lot by going beyond those who rant and rave. Do not mind them, and focus on how business works.
True, Europe is in trouble, but the United States is in greater trouble, business-wise. In the updated global outlook for GDP growth rates for 2016-2026, the Philippines is expected to grow by 7.4 percent in 2017, from 2016’s 8.3 percent and will level off at 6.1 percent from 2017-2021 and 5.5 per cent from 2022 to 2026. In other developing countries in Asia, growth rate will be at 5.1 percent in 2017, from 5.5 percent in 2016 then 5 percent from 2017-2021 and 4.5 percent in 2022-2026.
Before the rabid ones would point their fingers to President Rodrigo Duterte for the forecast slowdown, note that it is Asia-wide, affecting even China. The upswing is expected in the US and Canada, and it’s not even a swing, just a step up...and down of 2.2 percent in 2017 from 1.8 percent in 2016, a hold-over from 2017-2021 at 2.2 percent, and then a drop to 2 percent from 2022-2026.
That is how an economy moves. Except that Filipinos seem to be an impatient lot. They want everything right now! Especially since President Duterte took over.
I prefer to walk away and observe only those that are important--like the economy and projected growth, especially for agriculture, because we all need to eat, and that is what we should all worry about.
Looking at a very interesting website that picks out Philippine-related graphs and insights on agricultural outlook well into the future, I see consumption zooming up much higher than food production while the areas where agricultural produce are harvested hold steady until 2028.
In short, long after Duterte’s term ends, we will have a food supply problem. But no, Filipinos cannot be bothered by that. It’s not sexy, it’s not Martial Law.
We’ve been very good at nitpicking through declarations. We cannot make ourselves look toward the future. Especially now that Duterte is our President. We were willing to give former president Noynoy Aquino all the time to do what should be done, because you know, he never really wanted to run for president. Yes, we believed that line.
Now that someone really didn’t want the presidency, we do not believe his line. We wonder why, really. And so we dig all the prejudices and biases and run smack into Jim Paredes’s latest tirades about people from the bundok, and there it was in all its glory: The prejudice that has long divided our people, the prejudice that the central government and its people has long thrown our way.
I remember the lament of our former boss more than a decade ago. He said, he may have taken his masters from the Asian Institute of Management and the US, but to the people in Manila, he will always be the man from the province who will never be like them. As if we wanted to be like them.
I’ve resolved to let them be; let them live in their illusion of grandeur as we build on the strengths of our regions and provinces, and yes, the bundok, while they wallow in the squalor of their urban blight.
Don’t bother me, I’m busy with my new foundling kittens.--