No time for mañana

Thailand is back! They had messed up big time helped by the Thaksin red shirts going against the pro-royalty yellow shirts? But today the numbers are the numbers. They expect 2010 exports to be up 25%. That would mean at least 3 times our own 2010 exports projection of over $50 billion.

Not surprising given that their gross investments are at over 20% (of GDP) against our 14% which translate to an FDI (foreign direct investments) equity of $94 billion for them against our $23.

So what are we doing? This is no time for mañana? Are we focused on what really matters?

We’re preoccupied with the MDGs and the $434-million grand courtesy of Uncle Sam? And the uproar has encouraged cause-oriented groups to challenge the government – i.e., translate the photo-op into something tangible for the poor? But if we cover the shortfall in our investments as measured against Thailand, even a conservative multiplier [effect] would yield over $100 billion in incremental GDP – which would dramatically alter our poverty picture? Of course it will not happen overnight but it would put us on the right track?

Can we focus on what counts? We’re compassionate – so instinctively we want to subsidize the cost of basic necessities? But the subsidy route as we have seen in most every economic endeavor at home and abroad is unsustainable? (And why the OECD is taking countries to task, i.e., while their goal is to see social programs succeed they recognize that their vision would only be realized if economies are fundamentally sound.) Translation: it is elevated investments that will generate greater economic output or GDP for the Philippines? But we want to preserve the patrimony – yet at the rate we’re going, poverty would eat up whatever is left of our wellbeing? And we’re respectful of hierarchy and we can’t bite the hands that feed us – even investments must respect the hierarchy; and foreign investments are way down in the pecking order?

Where else are we looking instead of driving investments? We are debating issues that have a common denominator – i.e., how to ‘make-do’ instead of how to be in the driver’s seat? Making-do is a big distraction? But we’re compassionate – yet compassion is not our issue? We have plenty of that – what we lack is investment, which can make our compassion truly tangible?

We don’t want to be American copycats where the media is sophisticated and highfalutin – because we have a more fundamental challenge than they do? America is over the top and rightly so has to pay the price – they have moved the free-market system beyond the fundamentals of adding-value – i.e., those exotic financial products behind the collapse of the global financial system didn’t add value? They were for a specific purpose – to sustain profitability at the expense of value-creation, which ought to be the heart of the system? When a couple of Nobel Prize winners (i.e., the wizards behind the LTCM debacle; and then followed by subprime mortgage-derived products) develop mathematical models that defy the real world, there is no doubt the pressure to deliver is paramount? Or is there something more vested behind it – or did they honestly miss that the real world is not an ideal mathematical model? And likewise exotic products are not exempt from risk management, or simple prudence?

What is our fundamental challenge? We have to move beyond a developing economy, i.e., via investments – that’s what we ought to talk about if we are to move forward, make a dent and sustain the war against poverty? Thankfully, the Aquino Administration is doing it?