By Antonio C. Abaya
Written on Dec. 10, 2008
As mentioned in a previous column, the Arroyo administration is correct in proposing a P100 billion stimulus package as a counter-measure against the negative effects of the global financial meltdown on the Philippine economy.
Yesterday, the Cabinet approved the borrowing of $500 million from various financial sources for food security and judicial reforms (I do not understand why this was included in this package) and a P100 billion package for infrastructure projects.
Other governments – including the US, China, Japan, the European Union – have already taken this tack in response to massive job losses. In the US, 533,000 workers and employees lost their jobs in November alone, following 400,000+ in October and 300,000+ in September. An estimated two million Americans will have lost their jobs by year’s end.
Which prompted Robert Reich, one of the 17 members of the economic advisory team of President-elect Barack Obama, to ask if it is time to admit that the US economy is not just in recession, but is actually in a depression.
Obama himself has warned that the US economy will get worse before it gets better. For one thing, four million Americans are expected to lose their homes in the next two years, in addition to the almost two million who already have, because they can no longer afford to pay their monthly amortizations.
The Philippines is luckier. While most of the developed economies, starting with the US, are expected to shrink below zero in 2009, the Philippines’ GDP is still expected to grow but at an estimated rate that is continually shrinking, now estimated at three percent. .It will probably shrink even lower as more Filipino workers abroad are laid off and forced to return home, and orders for our electronic products – which make up 65 percent of our exports – dry up because of much reduced demand worldwide.
Our luck is due to our failure to develop our export industries and our tourism sector to the same extent as our more successful neighbors. Sometimes in an earthquake, skyscrapers topple while modest two-storey walk-ups often remain standing. That is our consuelo de bobo.
The P100 billion stimulus package is a correct response to an emergency situation. But we have to watch out that it does not become the consuelo de ladrones garapales y sin verguenza among presidential relatives and favored bureaucrats. Or the consuelo de hijos y hijas de la gran jodida p*ta who are scheming to railroad ChaCha through a shamelessly self-serving constituent assembly, to allow her to remain in power beyond 2010 as prime minister, and are preparing to spend our taxpayers’ money to buy their way to that goal.
Hopefully those P100 billion will all go to the intended beneficiaries, the unemployed and the underemployed, so that they and their families can weather the expected gales in 2009. But we really have no way of knowing that unless and until administration critics – the Churches and the NGOs – organize themselves into oversight committees that will follow the money trail to its last stops. Along the way there will be many sticky fingers that this government has deservedly become infamous for.
There are literally hundreds, even thousands, of much needed infrastructure that can and should be started with the P100 billion stimulus, such as miles and miles of irrigation canals to increase agricultural output and make us self-sufficient, finally, in rice and corn; thousands of school buildings and schoolrooms medical centers and hospital beds, to improve basic services in education and health; miles and miles of farm-to-market roads.
And speaking of roads, can anyone explain to me why no government of this country, since the time of the Aetas, seems to have thought of building a coastal road along the eastern seaboard of Luzon that would have connected Mauban (Quezon) to Infanta, to Baler to Casiguran to Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile’s Port Irene in Cagayan Province?
Such a coastal road, about 800 kilometers long, would have opened up hundreds of thousands of hectares of virgin, undeveloped land to enterprises in agriculture, forestry, mining, fishing, and tourism, with due cognizance of environmental concerns, and would have given gainful employment to hundreds of thousands of people who are at present packed in the densely populated Lingayen-to-Lucena Corridor.
My favorite infrastructure proposal is an electric tram network in Metro Manila that would inter-connect the stations of the LRTs and the MRT. Such a tram network would replace thousands of polluting diesel-powered jeepneys and buses, thus reducing air pollution significantly and easing road congestion as well, both of which are largely caused by those jeepneys and buses.
Just imagine EDSA without jeepneys and buses, replaced by electric trams running neatly in single-file, without polluting the air. Almost every major and minor city in Europe has electric trams, in addition to their subways or above-ground commuter rail trunk lines. We have been unconsciously following the flawed American model of a car-based transport system.
Such a network, which would connect residential subdivisions and work places to the LRTs and MRT stations and vice versa would encourage car-owners to leave their cars at home and take public transportation instead, thus reducing air pollution and road congestion even more. And it can be built under the Build-Operate-Transfer scheme, without any capital outlay from government.
Such a network should be run, not by a single monopolistic entity, but by a consortium that should include, if they so wish, the owners and drivers of the buses and jeepneys that will be displaced, so as to minimize social and economic dislocation
In 1995, I was invited to read a paper in an international conference on Cities and the New Global Economy, held in Melbourne and hosted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (the club of the 27 richest countries of the world) and the federal government of Australia.
In the off-hours, I asked for and was given a briefing on the electric tram network of Melbourne, a lovely city that is often voted as one of the most livable cities in the world. Although Melbourne then had 1.5 million vehicles – about the same as Metro Manila – there was/is virtually no traffic jams and virtually no pollution.
That is so because most Melbourne residents take the tram in their daily commutes. Melbourne is crisscrossed by 320 tram routes. Almost any point in Melbourne is accessible by a tram ride or a series of tram rides. Car-owners use their cars on weekends when they go out to the countryside.
In 2001 or 2002, I sent a written proposal to President Arroyo, through Malacanang chief-of-staff Vicky Garchitorena, for a similar tram network in Metro Manila. I never got a reply from them. *****
Reactions to tonyabaya@gmail.com. Other articles in www.tapatt.org and in acabaya.blogspot.com.
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