In 2017, the national government announced the establishment of a program to modernize the urban public transportation system. The program, called the Motor Vehicle Transportation Modernization Program (MVTMP), sought the replacement of jeepneys – the principal means of urban commuter transportation in this country – with new, fuel-efficient mini-buses acquired with the help of government-provided credit.
The makers of national transportation policy established MVTMP in the belief that the jeepney had seen its best days, having been the king of the nation’s urban thoroughfares since the late 1940s, when clever Filipino technicians converted into civilian transport vehicles the hundreds of thousands of military jeeps brought to this country by the returning US Army.
They believed that in an era of ever-rising fuel prices and of tourism-oriented urban beautification drives, the jeepney had ceased to be the best-bet form of urban commuter transportation.
Lest it be thought that I am writing about the phase-out of the jeepney without ever having taken a jeepney ride, I should say that I have had my fair share of riding in this ubiquitous and uniquely configured means of urban transportation.
The announcement of the establishment of the MVTMP was music to my ears for an additional reason. That reason revolved around one word – cooperatives. Under the MVTMP guidelines, operating franchises would in the future be approved only for cooperatives; franchises would no longer be granted to individual operators. Loans for the acquisition of mini’ buses (better known as utility vehicles, or UVs) would be granted by the government financial institutions only to transport cooperatives. No membership in a cooperative, no loan.
The transportation bureaucracy stands to derive a major benefit from the restructuring of the public transportation industry from tens of thousands of individual franchises’ holders to a much smaller number of cooperatives. Corruption in the processing and approval of franchises will be much reduced because the Land Transportation and Franchising Regulatory Board (LTFRB) will have far less individuals to deal with. Inefficient administration, such as delays in the release of franchises, will be easier to spot.
I have always been a staunch advocate of corporativism, believing that cooperative is an effective instrument for a country’s economic and social development. It is no coincidence that development and growth have proceeded fastest in economies where corporativism has been a traditional feature of a nation’s way of life. Prime example of this are the countries of Northern Europe and North America. This is particularly true of the agricultural sectors of these countries.
In contrast, corporativism has not been in grained in the Philippine way of life. True, the bayanihan spirit exists in this country, but it has not gone further than the performance of such collective endeavors as helping a rural neighbor move his house from one location to another. It hasn’t progressed to the point where farmers and small businessmen place their signatures on a document in which they agree to do production, procuring or marketing on a cooperative basis.
The cooperative concept is valuable in all aspects of a country’s economic life, but nowhere is it more valuable than in its agricultural sector. The economic policymakers of Northern Europe and North America found this to be very true in the development of their economies. Cooperatives are the norm in the agricultural sectors of their economies.
Cooperatives are particularly needed in Philippine agriculture. Filipino farmers are notorious for being deficient in financial resources and for lacking the documentation and credit track records that Philippine financial institutions need. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has long been pushing the commercial banks to do more lending to farmers – including the implementation of the Agri-Agra Law – but the bank feel constrained from doing so by the lack, in too many cases, of adequate land ownership and credit documentation. The impaired bankability of many farmer-borrowers in the wake of agrarian reform has not helped matters.
Several decades ago, Congress wanting to do a catch-up on corporativism, passed a law creating the Cooperatives Development Authority (CDA). Considering that the Filipino people have heard very little about corporativism – in fact the MVTMP issue probably reminded them that there is such a word – it is reasonable to conclude that CDA has failed in its mission to strengthen corporativism in this country.
Perhaps the time has come for a decision on whether CDA should be abolished and its staff and assets transferred to a new DTI undersecretary called the Undersecretary for Cooperatives Development.
As for the MVTMP cooperative, by all means let them be organized.
(llagasjessa@yahoo.com)
