Methinks the report aims, among other things, to silence the criticism Marcos Junior has received about his frequent travels.
However, it also has an unintended consequence: Why go through all the effort of changing the Constitution to remove the economic restrictions on FDI? All the country needs to get FDI is to send the President abroad, and voila!, we have all we want. So, shut up, ChaCha advocates.
But we still have to look at the numbers.
A lot of hoopla there was, about Congress needing its own national-level think tank; about academic research and published work not finding its way into legislation (this from the first-person experience of Cong. Quimbo – a staunch defender of the Maharlika Investment Fund)
If the CPBRD, the present think tank of Congress, is so inadequate as to need the help of 25 “Congressional Research Fellows”, whose fault is it? It is under the Office of the Speaker, after all.
Look more closely at the OECD FDI Index, (that people cite as evidence to change the Constitution). You would see that CHINA, which from the inception of the Index up to 2015, was ranked the most restrictive country in the OECD sample, was at the same time was also the largest recipient of FDI among the developing countries of the world. It still is, even though in 2015 the title of most restrictive passed on to the Philippines. Shortly thereafter, the Philippines the ninth, and the seventh top country of investment choice in a survey conducted by UNCTAD.
A colleague, Gerardo Sicat, asserts that the progress of “Tiger Economies” of East Asia-South Korea, Taiwan, Hongkong and Singapore – was “fueled by the heavy participation of foreign capital”. I refer him to the table on FDI, 1970-2021 which Sonny Africa presented to the Congressional Committee on Constitutional Amendments at the hearing on Thursday, where we were all present. the data show that FDI flows into Taiwan and South Korea were on the whole less, both in absolute terms and in percent of GDP, than FDI flows into the Philippines. In other words, there was no “heavy participation of foreign capital” that Gerry Sicat describes.
DA through the Food Terminal, buying onions at P140 million pesos of onions at P537 per kg. and selling them through the Kadiwa at P170, thus losing about P96 million. Whose brilliant idea was that? Selling at P170 was clearly to create the impression that Filipinos were now paying only that amount for onions, or the Kadiwa was doing a great job. “Management by illusion” is how the late Rafael Salas described the management style of PBBM’s father. Is this also true of the son?
Our Criminal Justice, according to the 2022 World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index, has the lowest score among 8 factors that comprise the Index. We were given a score of 0.32 (0 is the lowest, showing weakest adherence to the rule of law, and 1 is the highest score showing strongest adherence). For context, the global average is 0.47 and the regional average, i.e. East Asia and the Pacific, is 0.53. That’s how bad our system is.
Did you know, for example, Reader, that a 1997 study showed that the Philippines has a comparative advantage in onions? That means, essentially, that we should be a net exporter of onions. Did you know that a summary of a one-hectare average cost and returns of onions in 2019 shows that the net returns per hectare is P237, 681 (compare that to rice, where the 2021 net return per cropping season is P19,593 ) ? That the net profit-cost ratio is 2.15, which means that the ROI (return on investment) is 215%?
Now, all of sudden, the above four economic managers have issued a statement in favor of the bill, urging its immediate enactment, all warm and fuzzy and grateful to the legislature and the President.
I’m not buying it, Reader. It is written in such a brown-nosing manner that screams that the author is a paid hack of the Speaker and his congressional associates.
