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More and more, I am convinced that the salvation of the Philippine economy should not be entrusted to our government technocrats, central bankers, and economists. It's much too important to leave to these eggheads. They have absolutely no idea of the hardships they heap upon our hapless rural producers. read more..
The Philippine version of CARP can probably learn a lot from the East Asian experiences in agrarian reform. In Japan, Taiwan and Korea a pattern evolved which is worth adapting to the local situation.
One, there was relative speed and fairly wide coverage of land reform implementation. Previous to the 1947 start of land reform in Japan, only 31 % of farmers were land owners. This increased immediately to 40% in 1949. By 1955 some 80% of farm households owned their land. In Taiwan, owner cultivators rose from 36% in 1949 to 60% in 1957. In Korea, the statistics were 37% owner-cultivators in 1945 and 82% in 1968.
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There is a larger dimension to professionalization in the realm of social change. We have seen too many development managers who carry out their functions in an efficient and effective manner but who have failed in transforming their own lives and the lives of those they seek to change. Professionalizing, in its narrow sense, has to do simply with suffusing the manager with systematic, logical and methodical approaches to accomplish a job, complete with the necessary arsenal of skills, tools, and techniques. read more..
Entrepreneurship is vital to Philippine economic development. This linkage can best be appreciated by correlating the number of new enterprises established and the employment generated by enterprises with the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is the sum of all final goods and services produced by a country's people. The first two independent variables (new enterprises and employment) measure the level of entrepreneurial activity. The third term, GDP, is a dependent variable, which measures economic development. read more..
Laughing at ourselves is a healthy Filipino trait that makes us a resilient people. A good friend in the development field quipped that “we cant even make failures out of our failures.” He mentioned two examples.
Before the communist movement if the Philippines had a chance to fail, communism had already gone out of style in many parts of the world. So ven if the military finally quashes the NPA’s, it would not be a victory for them nor a failure for the rebels. read more..
How much has the stock market in the Philippines contributed to the country's development? Minimal might be an initial response. One could even suggest that the "equity" market has produced "income inequities" on a macro plane. The Philippine equity market has been dominated by the extractive industries (copper, gold, oil), the utilities (PLDT et al), finance companies, real estate investments, and beer. The first group is comprised of a few mining companies which exploit the national patrimony and destroy the environment. One wonders whether the Philippines really benefits by giving mining concessions away to a few companies while the rest of the Filipino peopl.. read more..
One of the crazier rules that developing countries must play by in the economic game is the GNP rule. GNP stands for Gross National Product or the sum total of all goods and services sold for money value. GNP can also be measured by the amount spent and the profits made to produce these goods and services. It is a measure of the flow of income or of expenses and says nothing about the status of the resources or assets of the country. In modern day parlance, GNP has been made synonymous to overall economic welfare and development although it does not measure such. Much of development is not captured by the GNP measure. Good health, nutrition, education, lei.. read more..
The phenomenal industrial growth of Japan, Korea, and Taiwan can trace its roots to the successful agrarian reform programs which these countries pursued after the Second World War. Today these countries boast of agricultural gross value added ranging from P100,000 to P200,000 per hectare compared to about P11,800 per hectare in 1985 for the Philippines. These countries have proven that the promotion of agricultural productivity by intensifying land usage through small owner-cultivators can provide a good base for rapid industrialization. Also, these countries decided, early in their development game, to address the issue of economic equity to avert social and political pro.. read more..
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