The above title rings a negative connotation. That’s why it is imperative to develop the discipline to forward-think and not fall into the trap. For example, beyond “analysis” is “analytics.”
Let’s drill that down: Is “Pinoy abilidad” the genesis of our instinct to analyze but not forward-think? In other words, “necessity is the mother of invention.” The analogy comes from the writer’s Eastern European experience.
Being the poorest country on the continent, people would matter-of-factly improvise. “Because we have no choice. Poor as we are, we won’t stop for a moment to consider other options we assume are unaffordable.”
Think about the instances when we assumed “Pinoy abilidad” was the answer to our predicament – because “poor” as we are, other options are unaffordable.
And they go the breadth. From import-substitution to the OFW phenomenon to the comprehensive agrarian reform to LGUs. And to push the envelope on the latter, why not Federalism?
Consider: Why did we not develop, beyond the jeepney and tricycle, an efficient public transportation system? And beyond a service economy, an industrial one? Beyond coconut and copra, a portfolio of high value-added industrial and consumer products? And from assembling computer chips to regional manufacturing of electronic devices?
Is it a surprise why our tycoons (cum oligarchy) haven’t progressed beyond rent-seeking – as in franchises or monopolies or government infrastructure projects – to world-class, innovative, and globally competitive enterprises?
As the blog argues, our caste system blinded us to figure out and traverse poverty to prosperity. Because “poor” as we are, we accepted the “hierarchy and paternalism” as givens?
To add insult to injury, we take it against Juan de la Cruz if he aspires for life’s comforts. And we have a name for it, consumerism.
That is how we resurrected Padre Damaso’s “absolute knowledge” – i.e., he holds the keys to heaven, no different from the scribes and Pharisees. Juan de la Cruz has no choice between good and evil. Yet, human as he is, he has a hierarchy of needs to adapt to this dynamic – and interdependent – universe.
Surprise, surprise! We didn’t develop “personal responsibility.” It is the converse of paternalism – as in sheltered.
Translation: That is why we are yet to demonstrate the capacity for self-government. And instead, we love and submit to tyranny – and impunity. Worse, we mistake it for nationalism and sovereignty and blind us to the imperative of interdependence, the very nature of this universe. Recall the photosynthesis phenomenon.
Do we wonder why in higher education – and the economy – we are the regional laggard? And we just added to our infamy, the pariah nation.
Moreover, given how “sabog” we are, we fall into the crab mentality – i.e., confuse the trivial many from the vital few and fail to internalize Pareto.
And here’s the spiel again: We lack development experience that comes from honing forward-thinking skills – and benchmarking and learning from others. And when we can’t forward-think, we can’t prioritize. And when we don’t prioritize, we suffer from sub-optimized efforts and outcomes.
In sum, unwittingly, we let the tail wag the dog.
Let’s restate the challenge we face: To thrive in the 21st century, we must be a world-class, innovative, and globally competitive economy.
And here’s where we are:
“THE National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said the agriculture sector had not shown improvements commensurate to the funding support.
"The observation is that we have been putting hundreds of billions in agriculture over many years. Why is it (that the sector has not helped) farmers raise the income ladder, and agriculture production growth should be at least 2% (has not been) achieved?
“This is not only about the amount of money in the budget; it is how we allocate and use them.” [“Agriculture sector fails to show improvement despite billions of pesos in funding — Chua,” Charmaine A. Tadalan, BusinessWorld, 17th Sep 2020]
What we need is to develop the discipline to forward-think. Consider: Thailand and Vietnam, together with the US, are the top rice exporters, for example.
And for Vietnam, they see the challenge spelled out as “the development of a sustainable food value chain. Especially to “very substantially modernize the domestic and export-oriented rice value chains.
“The object is to realize significant advances in technical efficiencies at different levels, and promote the introduction and spread of an ethos focused on greater (environmental) sustainability, product quality, and customer service.
“While the country addressed sustainable production and trade for some higher-value commodities, the rice value chain has generally been neglected.” [www.mdpi.com]
In other words, they are looking at creating an ecosystem that is a virtuous circle, from domestic to exports, from productivity to sustainability, from product quality to customer service.
There is an emphasis on both the supply side and the demand side. Vietnam is beyond inward-looking, into outward-looking. It responds to the fundamentals of Marketing, i.e., the consumer has a need, and it is in satisfying this requirement that the marketer derives compensation. This compensation paves the way for the enterprise to advance technical efficiencies at different levels.
If the blog continues to sound like a broken record, let’s revisit its genesis, from economic data in the 2007-08 period. Where were we against Vietnam then?
Consistent with the vital few or Pareto principle, the blog looked at very few indicators between us and our neighbors, i.e., GDP, Total Investments, FDIs, Exports, Imports, External Debt.
2007-2008 | Philippines | Malaysia | Thailand | Vietnam |
GDP $B | 144.1 | 186.5 | 245.7 | 70.02 |
Total Investments % | 14.2% | 21.8% | 26.8% | 40.0% |
Foreign Direct Investments $B | 18.4 | 86.31 | 80.84 | 33.74 |
Foreign Direct Investments % | 12.8% | 46.3% | 32.9% | 48.2% |
Exports $B | 49.32 | 181.2 | 151 | 48.07 |
Imports $B | 57.56 | 145.7 | 125 | 52.28 |
External Debt $B | 61.83 | 53.45 | 58.5 | 21.69 |
Specific to Vietnam, as early as the above period, it was already apparent that they would leave us in the dust.
Their GDP was less than half of PH, yet today their poverty rate is less than a third of ours, i.e., they have broken the back of poverty. And it is not surprising given their levels of investments and FDIs. And their latest reported exports are over four times ours.
In other words, if we were forward-thinking at least a dozen years ago, we could have arrested instead of falling into the “Dutch disease,” i.e., celebrating the OFW phenomenon. We must figure out how to move up to an industrial economy like our neighbors – the Asian Tigers, Malaysia, Thailand, and China.
In a previous posting, the blog discussed the advantage gained by winners. And we must recognize our neighbors as winners. Worse, they will continue to distance themselves, i.e., it will be harder to break the Philippine poverty line.
Why? FDIs are finite – especially that come with the requisite technologies – that we need to give us a quantum leap in national income or GDP.
Let’s hold it right there.
We appear unable to internalize that we measure a nation’s wealth by the income it generates. We keep looking at the failings of the US. And so, we are mixing apples and oranges and want to use happiness as a measure.
Yet, we also know that the Soviet empire, once a superpower like the US, is now extinct. And it was the absence of wealth that brought it down. It put all its eggs in one basket, i.e., military enterprise, instead of industrial power.
Compare that to China. Wealth made it the superpower we know today. And if the US has its failings, so does China.
Ergo: the conclusion that wealth doesn’t matter is way off base.
That’s why the blog never tires of speaking to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Humankind has basic or physiological needs that must be satisfied or fall behind in human development. They will not attain real adulthood and be a contributing member of society. Recall Bondying.
Quantum leap (in national income or GDP.) That is what we need. Not a drop in the bucket here and there. That is why the very idea of Federalism undermines a crying need for the Philippines.
Sadly, that is not intuitive for us to recognize and internalize, especially given the crab mentality.
We are deep in the abyss. And it stands to reason why we are in denial.
Consider: When the blog was new, the JFC launched Arangkada – to aggressively raise investment and employment in the Philippines – and geared up to present the initiative to the Aquino administration. That was ten years ago.
In short, we will be wasting two administrations yet nowhere near becoming an industrial economy. We don’t need a seer to tell us how the future will play out.
Yet, in 2014, we celebrated what we saw as “an uptick in manufacturing.” It is classic “analysis,” but missing the ”analytics,” or the absence of forward-thinking.
See above, where we were against our neighbors in the 2007-08 period, especially Vietnam. And Vietnam is poised to overtake even Singapore, recognizing the latter is limited in its ability to be a significant manufacturing-industrial hub.
In other words, we remain a service-consumption economy, and to celebrate a manufacturing uptick is a mirage. Or was it human nature, as in denial?
Some may remember the writer did restructuring in a Fortune 500 company. Given how dysfunctional the Philippine enterprise is, we must pursue a rethink of our instincts and world view.
In short, we need to redesign and reengineer the new Philippines. We can no longer keep resorting to patchwork. It is an enormous enterprise to respond to incremental efforts.
Yet, the way forward need not create an upheaval. For example, as Boo Chanco shared, their group has been doing Zoom meetings to figure out how to move forward. But it has to be beyond the pandemic. We must recognize that reality does not come in isolation. Challenges are a continuum.
And to miss the forward view is to start on the wrong foot. And it explains how we became the regional laggard. For example, (1) we set ourselves to be one, and (2) took on the risk in the South China Sea.
They are both human-made, not fate or destiny.
For example, “we have been putting hundreds of billions in agriculture over many years.” And we will fall into the trap of insanity if we keep to our instincts and world view.
We must also rethink and reengineer our monetary and fiscal interventions. That is why the blog keeps plugging Vietnam.
Given exports are our nemesis, incremental thinking and the crab mentality cannot be our mindset. We must figure out the vital few from the trivial many and drive monetary and fiscal interventions aggressively. Time is of the essence.
In other words, incentives must target the vital few, including taxation and infrastructure development. For example, attract a global market leader in electronic devices within our top exports’ product categories – i.e., over 64%. That is where we will get the biggest bang for the buck.
That is why we need “analytics” beyond “analysis.” We must be prepared to prioritize and de-prioritize. That is why LGUs and Federalism are a stumbling block. We must always go for the biggest bang for the buck for a nation with minimal resources.
That is how to raise tax revenues to fund rapidly our growing social needs. And that includes replicating the Pearl River Delta economic development zone.
But then again, we lack development experience, and that will not be intuitive. And we will want to fight poverty as a priority. Sadly, that’s why we’re in bed with the oligarchy and political patronage.
And that is why we can’t get over, “the tail wagging the dog.”
Gising bayan!
“Here is a land in which a few are spectacularly rich while the masses remain abjectly poor. And where freedom and its blessings are a reality for a minority and an illusion for the many. Here is a land consecrated to democracy but run by an entrenched plutocracy, dedicated to equality but mired in an archaic system of caste.
“But the fault was chiefly their own. Filipinos profess the love of country, but love themselves – individually – more.” [Ninoy Aquino, Foreign Affairs magazine, July 1968; Stanley Karnow, New York Times Magazine, “Cory Aquino’s Downhill Slide,” 19th Aug 1990.]
“Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow? Moreover, that they will be such is not to be doubted, for he who submits to tyranny loves it.” [We are ruled by Rizal’s ‘tyrants of tomorrow,’ Editorial, The Manila Times, 29th Dec 2015]
“True social reform has little to do with politics. To unmoor ourselves from the burdens of the past, we must be engaged in the act of continual and conscious self-renewal. All men are partially buried in the grave of custom. Even virtue is no longer such if it is stagnant.
“Change begins when we finally choose to examine critically and then recalibrate the ill-serving codes and conventions handed down to us, often unquestioned, by the past and its power structures. It is essentially an act of imagination first.” [David Henry Thoreau; American essayist, poet, and philosopher; 1817-1862]
“National prosperity is created, not inherited. It does not grow out of a country’s natural endowments, its labor pool, its interest rates, or its currency’s value, as classical economics insists. [A] nation’s competitiveness depends on the capacity of its industry to innovate and upgrade.” [The Competitive Advantage of Nations, Michael E. Porter, Harvard Business Review, March–April 1990]
“You have to have a dream, whether big or small. Then plan, focus, work hard, and be very determined to achieve your goals.” [Henry Sy Sr., Chairman Emeritus and Founder, SM Group (1924 - 2019)]
“Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” [William Pollard, 1911-1989, physicist-priest, Manhattan Project]
“Development is informed by a people’s worldview, cognitive capacity, values, moral development, self-identity, spirituality, and leadership . . .” [Frederic Laloux, Reinventing organizations, Nelson Parker, 2014]
“Now I know why Paul dared to speak of ‘the curse of the law’ (Galatians 3:13). Law reigns and discernment is unnecessary, which means there is little growth or change in such people. When you do not grow, you remain an infant.” [Faith and Science, Open to Change, Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, 23rd Oct 2017]
“As a major component for the education and reorientation of our people, mainstream media – their reporters, writers, photographers, columnists, and editors – have an obligation to this country . . .” [Era of documented irrelevance: Mainstream media, critics and protesters, Homobono A. Adaza, The Manila Times, 25th Nov 201
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