Rice farmers and retailers are incurring heavy losses from the price cap imposed starting on Sept. 5 on regular-milled and well-milled rice even as it brings temporary relief to consumers. Executive Order No. 39 (EO 39) set the price of regular-milled and well-milled rice at P41 and P45 a kilo, respectively, amid soaring prices of...
Tag: economy
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The state of our nation
My students found it very difficult to identify two of the current administration’s notable accomplishments in public finance. I can appreciate their difficulties. The budgetary deficit in 2022 was a staggering P1.61 trillion, or 7.33% of GDP. Government spent P5.16 trillion last year but raised only P3.54 trillion in revenues. I cannot help but wonder why...
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Southeast Asia’s dismal social conditions
While Southeast Asian economies have been fast expanding in the last decade, better than most regions, wealth and income inequality—i.e., the gap between the rich and poor—has been equally growing. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN Escap) reports that “Southeast Asia has seen inequalities widen, a setback to...
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‘Let’s not be blind to history’ in enforcing new rice production program
The strongman Ferdinand Marcos Sr. was said to have achieved some measure of success in “Masagana 99,” when farmers harvested more palay per hectare in the late 1970s. Backed by new technology, high-yielding varieties, cheap fertilizers and the construction of megadams in Luzon, the rice production program yielded modest surpluses for farmers for one or...
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Opposition to the Maharlika Investment Fund continues
Last May 31, with lightning speed, the Senate passed the controversial Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) bill in a plenary session that ran until 2 a.m. Until the end, critical lawmakers’ questions were unanswered and their concerns unaddressed. Because the House of Representatives subsequently accepted the Senate version in its entirety, the bill was no longer...
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Southeast Asia’s economic perils
The easing of pandemic restrictions and the opening up of economies saw Southeast Asia’s growth for 2022 being calculated by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) at a higher 5.5% from an earlier estimate of 5.1% “on stronger-than-expected domestic consumption, exports and services, particularly tourism.” Downplaying the Philippines’ seemingly impressive 2022 growth of 7.6%, economist JC...
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Jeepney driver says: Let us run our own show
By all means, phase out the traditional jeepneys, but let the operators and drivers modernize on their own—basically, run their own show—without the need of a cooperative that may only serve big business. This, in essence, is jeepney driver Rey Escanilla’s stance on the government’s fresh push to modernize the Philippines’ iconic “king of the...
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My understanding of economics
High prices often confront us. Government is trying to control inflation, which is increasing beyond its desired levels—an ideal of about 2% annually but currently is about 9%. Why do prices increase and why do they drop? Why do things appreciate and increase in value over time? Why do they depreciate? Market forces, we are...
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Merrymaking gone south, or a portent of things to come
Almost a month into 2023 and the rain still won’t stop in certain parts of the country, as though portending a bad time ahead despite the lunar new year’s promise of “a year of recovery.” The “shear line,” or the point where the cold northeast monsoon meets the warm easterlies from the Pacific—a relatively new...
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Is the Philippine economy ‘backward’?
We are not a “backward” economy. It’s just that economies capable of producing sophisticated manufactures necessarily require economies that must specialize in raw material or labor exports. That’s global capitalism for you. Ours is a developed capitalist economy to the extent that the capitalist economic system that grips the world today is already fully mature,...
