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“Balik Probinsya” should mean “Probinsya Muna.”

The Duterte administration recently launched the “Balik Probinsya, Bagong Pag-asa (B2)” program in an effort to effectively reverse the continuing trend of urban migration to Metro Manila and to control the steady population surge in the country’s capital. Manila’s congested population density has been long an inconvenient truth that many country’s policymakers and economic planners have long wanted to address but dared not tread into. With a population of 42,857 people per square kilometer, Manila is, in fact, one of the most densely populated cities in the world.

Even with its growing cost to the economy, the expanding strain on the environment, the worsening traffic and increasing poverty incidence, population congestion in Metro Manila did not seem to be much of a concern for a sitting administration – not until COVID-19 proved that having a population of more than 12 million within a mere 42.88 square kilometer area is simply not a sustainable option.

The “Balik Probinsya” program, however, is not a totally new concept. There have been previous attempts by past administrations to encourage the country’s rural emigres to return to the countryside. But most attempts ended in futility and until today, the exodus from the rural countryside to Metro Manila continues.

Hopefully, the Duterte edition of the “Balik Probinsya” program would not be a rehash of previous attempts to deter urban migration. Likewise, it should be more than just a quick-fix to the continuing threat of COVID-19.

“Balik Probinsya” must be a key economic development strategy.

The “Balik Probinsya” program should not simply focus on relocating people from Manila to the provinces. Such action simply misses the point. People from the provinces readily leave their homes and families behind for a better-paying job in Manila; this is an opportunity that seldom comes by in the provinces. This even includes those who have completed their college studies in Manila, but eventually decided stay in the capital to work, knowing that no job could afford them the same salary that they could get from being employed in the city.

The “Balik Probinsya” program should primarily focus on creating opportunities –infrastructure, livelihoods and investments – in the rural countryside.

The Duterte administration is correct in pushing a “whole-of-nation” approach to the “Balik Probinsya” program. But it needs more than just lip service. What the country needs is an economic reboot that would reverse the persistent bias for economic strategies that as a consequence keeps jobs and investments in Manila. It requires that the government shifts its priorities to more infrastructure spending in the provinces, improving social services such as education and healthcare in the rural areas, and aggressively pushing for economic incentives for businesses and enterprises that relocate to the countryside.

To this end, three important economic drivers are needed – sustained agricultural modernization, a stronger industrialization policy and a commitment to reduce the infrastructure deficit in the countryside. This means government should double its efforts and spending on agriculture, industrialization and infrastructure in the countryside, especially in the poorest regions in the country.

Millions of pesos from the government’s coffers are already being spent yearly to expand a congested road infrastructure in Metro Manila, when the better long-term solution is to create more roads, bridges and ports that will connect farms, industries and regional centers – creating more jobs and attracting more investments to the regions.

Case in point: Eastern Visayas, which continues to be among the country’s poorest regions. Despite hosting one of the largest geothermal energy sources and the second-largest copper smelting plant in Asia, its growth has been stifled by the apparently limited infrastructure. The modernization of its main gateway, the Daniel Z. Romualdez Airport has been long overdue. The region has been long wanting of a new international seaport, which has consequently increased logistic costs, a major turn-off for many industrial locators. Only recently was the expansion of region’s only industrial zone, which has been proposed by the region’s industry planners many years, received a fiat in the House of Representatives, thanks to a bill creating the Leyte Ecological Industrial Zone (LEIZ), authored by Tingog Party-List Rep. Yedda Marie K. Romualdez and Majority Leader and Leyte First District Representative Ferdinand Martin G. Romualdez.

Inspirational writer Steven Covey, once wrote, “Begin with the end in mind.” A “Balik Probinsya” program that simply focuses on relocation, without the addressing the longstanding political and socio-economic imbalances that have caused the lack of opportunities in the region will simply end with the same failed result.

For example, instead of suspending and defunding the country’s infrastructure program, the government should even double its infrastructure spending in the regions. Not only will more infrastructure projects, in the short term, create more job opportunities, it will also help improve the mobility of goods and services, connect farms with markets, and allow for closer economic integration.

Government spending is one of the surest ways to spur economic productivity in the region, as the results from the post-Yolanda reconstruction in Leyte will eventually prove. With the government in the lead, private investors would take the cue to disperse their economic activities across the regions. This deliberate effort of putting the focus on regional growth, coupled with the right fiscal and economic policies, would encourage sustainability. For example, creating economic zones in Manila should be discouraged, and existing economic zones must be required to transition to regional locations. Taxes should be paid and collected in the regions where the equitable amount of economic activity is done, and not demanded cumulatively from the Manila-based corporate office. The budgets of regional offices of national government agencies should be progressively increased, reflecting the need to bring more services to more people in the regions.

Agriculture remains a critical factor in regional growth. But so is the need to connect the farms with the market, technology and capital. But to recast the current agricultural landscape requires more than just farm inputs and post-harvest facilities. There is a need to consolidate production, improve access to capital, integrate technology and facilitate access to the market. This what Rachel Renucci-Tan and her Italian-French husband Patrick Renucci proved when they started a high-tech rice mill in the town of Alang-alang, Leyte and successfully brought their premium rice product, Dalisay rice, to Manila’s supermarkets. The irony is, it took an expatriate to teach us that it can be done.

“Balik Probinsya” should mean “Probinsya Muna.” It means shifting the current pattern of economic growth from a Manila-centric lens to that of a strongly region-based paradigm. Effort must be made to build on a region’s economic strengths in shaping our development policies and identifying our economic priorities. The regions should come first in terms of the government’s economic and social priorities. Finally, the political and economic over-dependence of the regions on the country’s geographic center of power should end, and regional stakeholders be empowered to play an equal role, not only as beneficiaries, but as contributors to the country’s overall national development. Only when such a long-term plan in place, and with the strong resolve to carry it through, then should government let our “probinsyanos” come home.

Relocating our people alone will not reverse the trend of urban migration. Keeping them home is the only lasting solution.