"The impact on the macro-economy of the 60-day lockdown has already been quite damaging."
"The impact on the macro-economy of the 60-day lockdown has already been quite damaging."
As all unfortunate things come to an end, “this too shall pass” as it is often said, the coronavirus pandemic will eventually abate. In other countries, particularly where it originated, the danger signs have been lifted. Some of course did not even have to engage their territories into lockdowns, partial or complete.
While it is comforting to take note of signals from the Palace that the Enhanced Community Quarantine may soon be “modified,” the impact on the macro-economy of the 60-day lockdown has already been quite damaging. It gets worse when we consider the effect on the lives of the marginalized, from the poorest of the poor to the lower middle class.
What now? What next?
Many have been talking about the “new normal,” of how our lives have been changed by the pandemic, but that is something for the “haves” to chew upon. For those who live below the poverty line, and even those in the margins, the “isang kahig, isang tuka,” there will be no new normal. The problems will remain, and because the government’s resources have been diminished greatly by the unprecedented response to the pandemic, succor from above will be below even the normal.
Even the long-presumed saving graces of our economy, the OFWs, whether land-based or maritime, are on exodus-mode. The entire world is reeling from the effects of the pandemic, their own economies crippled, whether these are based on natural resources like oil, or manufacturing whose supply chains have been disrupted, and will take some time to recover.
There are thousands of oil tankers dormant in piers around the world, unable to disgorge what once was such a precious commodity, because demand for such “lifeblood” has dried up. So our sailors are returning, their savings just enough to tide their families over if at all for the rest of the year, but with disposable incomes and purchasing power limited to the basics. Our consumption-driven economy will be negatively affected, and so will taxes, VAT revenues being one of the major sources of government means.
My friend Doc Ernie Pernia must be relieved that he is no longer in charge of planning what and how government must react to control the damage. And the new kid on the block, Karl Kendrick Chua, has youthful energy at least as an ally in looking for the ways and means. One can only wish him well.
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Our agriculture secretary, Willy Dar, hastens to assure us all that there is no need to worry about the supply of rice, despite concerns triggered by the recent action of the Vietnamese government to limit exports of its major cash crop in order to ensure the country’s own food security. Vietnam, while being a major rice exporter, also has to grapple with the enormity of a 96-million population to feed. Its production has been steadily declining over the past few years with farmers shifting to high-value crops with less dependence on the waters of the Mekong River.
Private sector importers already given permits by the Bureau of Plant Industry are having problems of fulfilling their import commitments at the prices they forecast. While this has created a favorable impact on our domestic palay farmers, the previous year’s rice tariffication impact, followed by the lockdown, does not augur well for better summer harvests.
And though present inventory levels are comfortable enough, a major typhoon at the wrong time later in the year may create price and supply problems for our heavy rice-consuming population.
Though difficult, especially with the lifting of quantitative restrictions on rice importation, the need for ensuring food security at all times is essential. In fact more than essential, because food security IS a matter of national security.
Long-term solutions have to be crafted and properly implemented. In the case of Malaysia, a policy decision made way back was to ensure local production of its rice needs for up to 70 percent of consumer demand, while using its land for higher-value crops with export demand, such as oil palm and rubber.
To respond to the 30 percent consumer requirement, they import. But they have a strategy which we cannot employ on account of our procurement laws, which requires contracting such imports on the basis of actual need. Malaysia financed milling facilities in producing countries premised on assured supply contracts which thus inures them from the volatilities of the market.
Still, there is no substitute for domestic self-reliance, not necessarily targeted at 100 percent self-sufficiency, but reasonably adequate for our high consumer demand. And the key is assured good prices for our palay farmers, the great majority of whom are agrarian reform beneficiaries tilling small, un-economic parcels of land. They cannot mechanize because their plots are too small, and cooperatives have been a failure in local practice.
It is a very complicated problem, and has been left unattended to for the longest time, such that the offspring of our farmers no longer want to work in their parents’ “emancipated” farm plots, preferring instead to migrate to the cities for better-paying jobs, and ultimately join the “Filipino dream” of overseas work.
But as we have seen, this hegira poses complicated problems, too, “kawing-kawing,” the Tagalogs describe.
In a future article, we would propose a possible solution, occasioned by the inspiring story of what private businessmen like Ramon S. Ang have done in the midst of the coronavirus crisis.
A lengthy explanation requires another column.
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Once again we are deeply saddened by the death of a friend—a titan in the advertising industry and tourism as well, from which sectors I have also been involved.
I first met Ramon Jimenez through a common friend, former Senator Orly Mercado in whose previous political career I was active upon. Both products of the University of the Philippines, Mon was Orly’s creative marketing “guru.”
Thereafter, I collaborated with Mon and his secret weapon—his wife Abby, in crafting the ads for the successful presidential campaign of Cory Aquino’s son, Noynoy in 2010. I crafted the message; Mon and Abby executed the creatives.
We were on different sides of the political fence in 2016. But P-Noy wisely chose him to be tourism secretary in 2010, and his initiatives were a smashing success, particularly centered on the slogan “It’s More Fun in the Philippines!”
In the immediate wake of President Rodrigo Duterte’s victory in 2016, I wanted to recommend that the president retain Mon Jimenez as tourism secretary. So I asked a common friend to first ask Mon about whether he would consider remaining in the tourism portfolio.
At the time, his loving partner Abby had just left him after a long bout with the Big C, and Mon was still disconsolate. He begged off.
It is to Mon’s credit that the present secretary, Berna Romulo-Puyat, chose to maintain the tourism slogan which he crafted, “It’s More Fun in the Philippines.” Unlike predecessors whose first wont is to change everything, and reproduce policies in their new image, Secretary Berna wisely maintained the national tourism come-on.
Friends as well as the entire tourism sector will miss Ramon Jimenez. He is now having more fun in heaven with Abby.