Filipino job exodus intensifies amid meaningless growth rate

April 4, 2008

Letters from Port Moresby (Year 3)

ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ
http://batasnews.com/today/moresby.htm

EVERY Thursday morning shortly before 5, the Air Niugini flight from Manila arrives at the Jackson international airport here in Port Moresby. As in the past, it is always expected that more than half of the passengers would be Filipinos, with a small number of them returning after a 30-day work leave.

The rest of the "Pinoy" passengers are coming to Papua New Guinea for the first time, not as tourists, but expectant contract workers – accountants or financial officers, IT and technical people, office and business managers, engineers, architects and skilled workers. They signed up a two-year contract, but with utmost diligence in doing their jobs, they are usually kept for good by their employers who are either Malaysian or Australian or multinational companies.

As a result, they stayed on in their jobs until they come to like PNG, which, to their delight, is still unspoiled by pollution and traffic-free, and make it their second home. When Digicel PNG, the second cellphone provider with its mother company based in Jamaica started its operations here last year, they hired mostly Filipinos to work at the IT department and other sensitive functions.

The inherent talent of Filipinos had been attested to by the first wave of OFWs who came to PNG in 1974 to help the country run its economy to prepare for its independence from Australia the following year. From then on, more Pinoy invaders came and traded their skills for good remunerations with foreign and local employers. Almost all of them opted to stay in the country until they reached retirement age. But then, they were taken over by their own sons and daughters who left the Philippines when life had become unbearable, and to make PNG their new home.

The Philippine Embassy in Port Moresby estimates that there are close to 10,000 Filipinos at any given time scattered all over the country working in the mines, forestry, fishery, government and private sectors.

For the Filipinos and the rest of Asian workers who continue to arrive here every week by the plane-load, Papua New Guinea is the new, low-profile emerging economic frontier in this part of the Pacific region. It is here where job opportunities are available for those who have the skills, talent and patience. For both foreign businesses and expatriate workers, being in PNG these days is to be in the right place for the coming of bigger economic windfall in future.

According to the World Bank this week, PNG is well on its way to becoming a new economic force in the region, riding on the back of its fast-developing natural resources that included oil, liquefied natural gas, gold, copper, forestry and fisheries. A new industry, which could be a new window of opportunity for Filipino engineers and skilled workers, is the seafloor mining which foreign explorers are now trying to develop off the shore of mainland PNG.

The bank's half yearly assessment of East Asian and Pacific economies said PNG's gross domestic product rose by around 6% last year, the highest real economic growth rate in the past decade. It said formal employment across most sectors has been growing by about 10% annually since 2005.

This growth was led by construction, telecommunications and export-oriented agriculture (coffee, copra and palm oil) and mining with "structural constraints" likely to slow its pace over the medium term. The stronger PNG growth contrasted with the World Bank's predictions for East Asia's economies, which were anticipated to decline by one or two percentage points to around 8.6% this year.

And for our "kababayan" back home, this is great news. It means more opportunities for those wanting to come here. With skills acquired and honed back in the Philippines to help push our beloved country economically – an opportunity deprived of them because of the failure of the government to do its job of invigorating the economy – they are here instead in PNG to help develop its fledgling but vibrant economy.

When our "kababayan" opted to work here, it was because there was nothing for them back in the Philippines to hold on to for decent survival, something on which they could make use of their skills and training to contribute to economic creation.

Those thousands of new graduates from the university this year are now plotting their next move for a decent survival when they finally join the job market. But this would only be temporary. In the back of their mind, there's a better place for them, not in the Philippines but in other countries, where employers would appreciate their talents and skills better and thus, reward them accordingly.

But there's of course one readily available stopgap measure for those who got the talent in speaking English: call centers that are sprouting like overnight mushrooms. Right now, particularly in Metro Manila and in Cebu City the only thing really going at high speed are the call centers, which surprisingly are gradually revealing themselves as "exploitation centers" due to long hours working the phone – 12 hours per shift – but with pays ranging from PHP15,000 a month for "agents", to PHP30,000 for "supervisors", a monthly take that would be hard to find in other line of jobs.

As many call center workers quit along the way due to the great toll on their health, especially those working the graveyard shift, a thousand more are on the line waiting to have a crack at the job and earn something decent for themselves and also for their families, at least for the meantime. This is obvious because there's nowhere else to go for a job that pays this much.

And there are no development activities that could really make use of their talents and skills despite the much ballyhooed economic growth of 7.3% the country achieved last year, that turned out to be an empty bag for a number of reasons.

Under President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's economics, a lot more Filipino professionals have no role to play in nationbuilding, so their only option is to look for the proverbial greener pastures in foreign lands, away from their families and leave the reaping of the country's wealth via the coffers of the government to Arroyo's cronies and thieves in government.

Looking straight beyond the horizon and above the failed promises of economic progress that the government started dishing out seven years ago, the jobless Pinoy could always see something else more clearly: overseas jobs.

That's why at the processing center at POEA, or the Philippine Overseas Employment Authority, we could see thousands on long queues before several windows trying to find out what jobs are up for the taking. While right inside this building at the heart of the processing center, hundreds are waiting for their turn at the windows to pay fees that would eventually lead them to their first overseas jobs particularly in the Middle East, Singapore, Hong Kong, Europe, PNG, the US, Australia, Canada, South Korea, Taiwan, Mexico, Japan UK, New Zealand and even in Africa.

By force of economic pressure, poor and slow-developing Asian countries aside from the Philippines are also seeing their citizens leave their homeland to make a living in fast-modernizing countries like Dubai, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the rest of the oil-rich countries in the Middle East. And being the Mecca for OFWs, they are in great need of skilled and professional workers to help them propel their economy into becoming the new members of the industrialized world.

But this migration drift in the Philippines and in a number of countries in East Asia has triggered the danger alarm at the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

Such exodus of Asian workers – skilled, non-skilled and professionals – could seriously hamper economic growth and push for development right in Asian region, the Manila-based ADB warned in its annual outlook report released this week.

ADB said: "The (skills) shortage is widespread and has been partly driven by skilled workers and professionals leaving to take opportunities in industrialized countries around the world.

"Although this brain drain is hardly new to the region, the skills shortage confronting it has added a new, more urgent dimension to this trend," the bank said. It called the shortfall a "symptom" of Asia's economic success.

But until now, many Filipinos are asking if their country is among those that have really achieved genuine economic success.

But whatever claims from the Arroyo government that the Philippines has really did it, it is somehow belied by the hordes of OFW leaving the Ninoy Aquino International Airport everyday in increasing numbers.

The continued brain drain has been the result of sustained average jobless rate of 11.3 per cent over the period 2001-2007 under the Arroyo government, showing that the economy is still suffering record unemployment despite the government's attempts to gloss over the figures.

While it is true that many countries – big and small – are reeling under the onslaught of economic crisis that is now plaguing the US, it could not be used as an excuse by government apologists to justify or explain the present predicament being experienced by the Philippines.

All these troubles came about only a few months ago as triggered by the sub-prime credit crisis that hit hard the US financial and banking sectors, resulting in the Domino effect that is now causing the tumbling over of a number of economies around the world.

But in its latest half-year review for the East Asia and Pacific region's economies, the World Bank noted that East Asian economies remain buoyant amid faltering economy in which the region's economy will decline by around one to two percentage points to around 8.5% this year, "as a result of the unfolding financial turmoil in the US and the resulting global slowdown".

"But despite the likely drop from recent double-digit levels, overall growth remains healthy across the region and most countries are well positioned to navigate the global slowdown because of the investment they've made in the last 10 years in structural reforms and putting sound macroeconomic policies in place."

It is very clear, therefore, the Philippines is not among these countries that made hay while the going was great. The Arroyo government has been here since seven years ago – starting in 2001 when she took over the rein of the government. And over these seven years Gloria had done nothing to prime up the country's economy to boost the lives of the people and lift their mass above abject poverty.

If only she had really did her job as the CEO to shore up a faltering economy amid unabated corruption right in her very own midst, the country would have been better off these days in weathering the crisis that is now whipping the biggest economies around the world.

THE ADB REPORT noted the imbalances caused by the brain drain are particularly evident among professional groups, including accountants, airline pilots, business managers, engineers, lawyers, medical doctors, scientists and software specialists."

In many Philippine rural areas, young men who used to toil in the land particularly rice farms, have finally decided to pack up for the city with their sight firmly trained on possible jobs abroad. Leaving the tilling of the farm to their aging fathers and relatives has become an every day scene all over the country as the prospects of surviving from the fruits of what they had planted could no longer support even the basic needs of their growing family.

So it is no surprise that in the next 10 years, the usual rice paddies heavy with golden grains ready for harvest every summer would then be a thing of the past as they shall have been overwhelmed either by "cogon" and "talahib" or subdivision houses.

The dwindling farm incomes amid increasing cost of food and other basic goods could well explain why many small farm owners decided to sell off their rice farms to raise money to pay for placement fees to unscrupulous overseas job recruiters. Their young men and women are badly in need of jobs that could neither be found in Metro Manila nor in provincial cities.

But their chances of working overseas is much better, whether as domestics or laborers with wages much better than what could be had in the Philippines. But first, they have to get rid of their rice farms to pay for placement fees in the hope that it would be recouped sooner or later in the form of US dollars that their sons and daughters would send back home.

Because there's a dearth of skills in the Philippines, ADB noted that "it has resulted in productivity losses and idle capital, rising wage costs, increased turnover of sought-after workers (as in call centers, hospitals and schools), and higher placement and training cost for new workers".

Despite the World Bank's report this week saying the Philippines is leading its peers in East Asia with 7.3 per cent GDP, it's not a guarantee that the exodus of Filipino workers overseas would slow down. Critics of the 7.3% GDP have clearly argued that it was artificial, as it just rode on the back of huge remittances last year by some 11 million OFWs amounting to more than US$14 billion. This spurred massive consumption by OFW families which accounted for more than 60 per cent of such growth in GDP.

Other source of revenues, the bank noted, were receipts from sold government assets under the privatization program and not from economic creations like increased manufacturing and agro-production activities like rice or sugar cane cropping.

Since the growth has been branded as fake, it was no surprise that the number of poor Filipinos continued to increase because there has been no trickle down effect on those who badly needed economic salvation. Government's 2006 poverty data revealed that the number of poor people increased from 30 per cent in 2003 to 32.9 per cent in 2006, while recent data showed that in 2007, there was an annual average of 2.7 million unemployed Filipinos.

Sonny Africa, IBON research head, cited a recent IBON study that estimates at least 4.06 million jobless Filipinos and an unemployment rate of 10.8 per cent. This was 1.4 million more than the official count of 2.7 million, and which placed the average unemployment rate for last year at just 7.3 per cent.

Africa stressed that the 601,000 net additional jobs created last year is just a 1.8% increase from the previous year, which is the fourth slowest rate of job creation in the seven years so far of the Arroyo administration. And the most jobs were created in domestic household help with 142,000 additional such jobs created. In contrast, IBON revealed that only 72,000 agricultural jobs and 4,000 manufacturing jobs were added.

All this, employment and unemployment trends in 2007 just confirm the deep problems of the Philippine economy despite the much hype about rapid economic growth that made ADB jump in sheer surprise to see that country is no longer the laggard of Southeast Asia.

Thomas Crouch, deputy director general of the ADB said: "The 7.3 per cent economic growth posted in 2007 showed the Philippines "is no longer the laggard (of Asia) … it is approaching the average (economic growth) of the region as a whole." ADB figures showed that while Manila jumped 7.3% last year, Indonesia posted 6.3%; Malaysia, 6.3%; Thailand, 4.8%; and Vietnam, 8.5%.

But then, it's no guarantee that the Filipinos would be better off this year; in fact they are in for more trouble due to the soaring prices of food and other basic commodities, along with the rice shortage prevailing in the country. For the Filipinos who have regular source of income, food makes up about 60 per cent of their family spending.

"While the sub-prime crisis will have its impacts – possibly on some countries more than others – the more immediate concern is that in every East Asian country, inflation is climbing to uncomfortable levels," said Jim Adams, vice-president of the World Bank's East Asia & Pacific region.

Because of this, Adams has warned: We are already seeing real incomes of poor people living in rural and urban areas (as in the Philippines) decline substantially as a result of high food prices."

Thus, World Bank is seeing the Philippines' economic performance with the GDP slowing down to 5.9 per cent and 6.1 per cent for this year and 2009, respectively. The bank has warned that the country's window of opportunity to sustain such growth would not remain open for long.

But the World Bank need not bother about the country's losing this "window of opportunity" to sustain such growth. At the rate the Arroyo government is running the country's economy, there's no real hope that there could be genuine economic development that would really benefit the majority of the people.

Main reason is that the Arroyo government is mired in dirty politics just to survive while holding on to power and plundering the economy, thus preventing it from really doing concrete moves that could effect change to better the lives of the people.

But anyway, the 11 million OFW across the globe will continue to keep the Philippine economy afloat with their dollar remittances, whether or not Arroyo, as the country's CEO, does her job; and whether or not she stops her plunder of the people's money.

Email the writer: jarahdz500@online.net.pg

alfredophernandez@thenational.com.pg

(This article is also posted on www.PerryScope.org)