The Philippines and the world

Steven Rood from the Asia Foundation has just posted an interesting round-up (4 Jan) of last year's events in the Philippines. Despite the concerns that have been articulated about some of President Aquino’s tactics in the fight against high-level fraud and graft, citizens are, it seems, more optimistic than they’ve been for 25 years, and support for the president remains high.

That’s interesting, because the economy, according to Andrew James Masigan (26 Dec), isn’t doing too well: “What started out as a year filled with hope and optimism turned out to be quite the non-event—at least in as far as the national economy is concerned… Think tanks from all over the world agree that we’d be lucky to achieve a full year’s growth of 3.8 percent. Numbers show that they are probably right.” Among his New Year wishes, therefore, is for the government to “shift its focus on the economy and pursue its development with the same zeal it did [former President] Arroyo’s arrest”.

Pia Lee-Brago (28 Dec) offers a run-down of Philippines foreign affairs activities for the year. With so many overseas workers, and so many trouble spots, it is not surprising that repatriation has been a big theme. Not that workers necessarily want to head home: “At least 31 Filipino workers were led out of Libya in March but many decided to remain because of promised increase of salary if they stay, while others were told they would lose entitlement to gratuity pay equivalent to one full month’s salary if they do not finish their contracts. The OFWs were actually more concerned about the difficulty of remitting money to their family than the air strikes on different parts of Libya. They asked how the government could help them in their remittances.”

But the world also comes to the Philippines. The Philippine Daily Inquirer (5 Jan) notes that the country’s Business Process Outsourcing industry employs around half a million Filipinos, and has overtaken India to become “the world’s biggest provider of call center agents”. The labour secretary is therefore keeping a careful eye on proposed changes of legislation in the US that might negatively impact this sector.

Filipinos certainly need to be resilient. An opinion piece in Business World Online (3 Jan) notes that the Brussels-based Center for Research and Epidemiology Disasters puts the Philippines top of its listings of disaster-prone countries: “Based on an annual statistical review compiled by the group, the Philippines led the list of natural disasters with 24, making the country the hardest hit in terms of calamities that pose a serious threat to life and limb. A poor second was China with 16 disaster events.”

Disaster-preparedness could certainly be better, but as much richer countries have discovered, no-one is immune. All the more reason, then, as Steven Rood's commentary emphasizes, to focus attention on the man-made disaster that is corruption.