By Marc Guerrero
THE Pag-IBIG Fund makes it appear in its TV advertisements that owning one’s first house is as simple as reciting the ABC. Commercial banks’ easy-term loans also seem to echo Pag-IBIG’s come-on that buying a house is as easy as counting 123.
It is easier said than done, in real terms.
Moderate labor is fighting tooth and nail to have its standard minimum wage of P16,000 a month proposition, legislated.
IBON Databank in its 1980s studies had recommended that “a Filipino family of four needed to work harder (compared to its Asian neighbors) and be paid a minimum monthly wage of P30,000, just to survive its daily grind.”
More than 30 years after, today, basic pay of ordinary Filipinos had remained on a standstill, at an average P10,000 a month in the cities, and much less in the provinces.
The poor still cannot afford to buy their first dream house, even though they have some jobs or running their micro business.
An expert on political economy warned that the wide disparity in rural and urban wages remains a roadblock to achieving inclusive, broadbased development, despite the Philippines’ registering some economic growth, here and there.
The Frederic Bastiat chair on political economy at Mercatus Centre paper had observed, “the PH’s overall ratio of rural and urban wage gap at 67 percent (2013) remained constant over the last decades. There are higher ratios when skilled and unskilled workers are considered separately. Areas with a high share of agriculture have the lowest relative wages,” it was revealed.
There is a pressing need to even out the rural-urban wage gap, the study recommended, by taking a hard look at differences in labor policies between commercial industries and rural labor.
The paper pointed out, urban workers actually earn slightly less in real terms than rural workers when relative prices are considered. Despite the higher cost of living in urban centers, there are compensating factors that can explain why people flock to already-congested cities. These are unmeasured intangibles, like better public services, improved networks, more educational opportunities, better urban amenities, and an expectation of social mobility.
Take Myles Sibug, then a 29-year old visual artist, with a house mate and a child, for instance.
He was Manila-born and -bred. He went to the suburbs to study, and then transferred to the city to work. But when he thought of buying and building his own home years ago, he chose the far-flung part of Rizal province to invest in low-cost housing via the Pag-IBIG financing.
A 20-sqm lot and bare house situated in a semi-developed subdivision with P4,000 in monthly amortization for 20 years, equivalent to total average of P1 million, had cost him P40,000 in down payment.
He was able to afford the initial payment with the broker in six months, by making do with canned goods for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and by slowing down on youngsters’ panic buying of the latest clothes, shoes, tech gadgets, motorbike dressing-up and the like.
He also invested a few tens of thousands of pesos to develop his matchbox shelter with a modicum of decency and comfort.
Myles is compensated with almost-double the minimum wage in a medical facility chain based in Pasig City. But his pay cannot cope with the high standard of living in the city.
His classmates back at the University of Santo Tomas who had chosen to be away from loved ones to earn right overseas, were able to buy themselves prime properties, like a condominium if not a farm. Myles and partner are thinking of going to Canada in no time at all. But going OFW has social costs.
Meanwhile, in General Santos city in Mindanao, the so-called local or ethnic haves are briskly buying and selling hectares upon hectares of prime properties worth millions of pesos, for residential, commercial and industrial uses.
Their only problem is simple: The informal settlers who rose like mushrooms over the years from their nonproductive assets or properties—inherited or not.
But it’s easy, the lady Gensan landowner promised the prospective buyers from Manila, “We will just pay them, buy them out, or relocate them!” Relocating the informal settlers means directing them to socialized housing or throwing the poor out in some undeveloped locations away from basic light, water and social service infrastructure and livelihood.
Be that as it may, six Philippine administrations, in the meantime, appear to have failed in putting a full stop to pay gap issues, questions and concerns in the country. As to why and how come are queries that in themselves look like they are running stories. We want to see change coming, demand the millennials.
Guerrero is a writer, editor, translator, lecturer and critic.