By Herbert Vego
MY son, a nurse in Chicago, called to ask how much is today’s conversion rate of the US dollar to Philippine peso. I answered “₱57” while thinking to myself it’s not really good news; it’s tantamount to eroding the buying power of the peso.
Anyway, I did some research on Google, which said that in January this year, according to the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA), the Philippine economy in 2023 had grown by 5.6 percent, thus becoming one of the top performers in Southeast Asia..
“Our gross national income (GNI) per capita of US $3,950 in 2023,” NEDA projected, “could rise to no less than US $4,500 this year.”
Since I am totally ignorant about this “GNI,” I could only rely on the dictionary to vaguely understand it as “the value of a country’s final income in a year divided by its population.”
Anyway, I take it to mean that monetary inflation could be subdued by productivity amid a growing population, now estimated to have hit 120 million.
Unfortunately, it is said that 90 percent of the country’s wealth is in the hands of the rich. The poor make do with only 10 percent.
Most poor Filipino couples wallow in the mistaken notion that the more babies they make, the more they contribute to productivity. This belief is especially prevalent among farmers who expect their children to take over farm work, only to be disappointed.
Why so when our country is rich in natural resources? We grow rice, sugar cane, pineapples, bananas and coconuts, among others. Our seas throb with fishes. Why have we not maximized the utilization of these natural resources?
Is it because we have mishandled our natural resources? For instance, due to illegal logging and upland urbanization, the country has lost forest cover. According to the Philippine Institute for
Development Studies (PIDS), our forest cover has dwindled to seven million hectares or 23% of the country’s total land area.
The same government institution revealed that in the early years of the Spanish colonial period, our forest cover was over 90%. To quote researcher Karol Ilagan of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), “The first Christian missionaries saw trees extending from the shores to the mountaintops, and likened the country to a paradise.”
That explains why the surviving Spanish-vintage homes are made of hardwood.
We could have struck a balance between income and consumption. An ideal family must limit the number of children to as many as it can feed, clothe and send to school. A good education will assure them of better opportunities for success. Failure to do this would condemn future generations to a vicious cycle of poverty.
Slowly but surely, on the brighter side, our entrepreneurs are learning to exploit our natural resources to the hilt. The Guimaras mango, for example, has found a huge export market in Australia. Dried ripe mangoes, done in Cebu, are available in duty-free airport shops everywhere.
Ironically, it was during a vacation in New Zealand that I ate the sweetest pineapples – imported from the Philippines.
We have creative professionals in the arts and sciences – say painting, writing, sculpting, cooking, gardening, sewing, playing instruments, dancing, singing, nursing, caregiving, among others – but there’s not enough local environment for them to thrive.
No wonder there are now more than 12 million Filipinos who live abroad. Of this number, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), around 2.33 million constitute the present number of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).
The most compelling reason why Filipinos choose to work abroad is to improve their economic situation. They are fed up with low wages here.
The government, sad to say, does not discourage this misfortune because our own survival at home now depends on remittances from OFWs. Based on data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), personal remittances from OFWs reached an all-time high of US $37.2 billion in 2023, up by 3 percent from $36.1 billion in 2022.
The 2023 remittances from OFWs accounted for about 8.5 percent of our gross domestic product (GNP).
The few of them who come home to engage in business end up frustrated due to lack of government support.
Ay ahay.
-oOo-
MORE POWER AT ‘BIDA RISE & RUN’
LAST Saturday (April 20, 2024), MORE Power employees participated in the 2024 Bida Rise & Run, a running event organized by the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) – Iloilo City to dramatize its campaign against drug addiction.
Some 20 of them woke up at 3:00 am to converge at Iloilo City Hall, the venue for the 4:00 am run.
Miss Rose Corpus of MORE Power’s Treasury Division emerged as the first finisher among the MORE Power employees. She received a cash prize from President/CEO Roel Z Castro.
Castro revealed that all of the company’s personnel had recently undergone random drug testing and tested negative. To celebrate that happy result, all MORE Power Bida runners partook of a sumptuous buffet breakfast at Hotel Del Rio.
