Heavy with petty quips (like a column in a weekly tabloid) President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s State of the Nation Address was light on substance.

She claimed that the “economy posted uninterrupted growth for 33 quarters and more than doubled in size to $186 billion during her 8 ½ years in power.” But the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), in its last Philippine Strategy Report, stated: “40 percent of the Philippine population, approximately 36 million people, live on less than $2 a day. The poorest areas of the country are concentrated in conflict-affected areas of Mindanao where up to 70 percent of the population lives in poverty.”

The USAID added: “(T)he Philippines has had a relatively weak investment climate and has failed to attract a significant share of foreign direct investment, ” averaging only 14 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) since 2000, one of the lowest in the region. The report stated further: “Despite moderately strong growth of the GDP and an improved fiscal balance in recent years, the Philippines has been overtaken by Malaysia, Thailand, and China on a GDP per capita basis.”

The July 28 issue of the Inquirer summed up Arroyo’s claimed achievements in the economy: “(Her) fiscal measures protected the economy from global downturn, tamed inflation, created 8 million jobs and reduced by 2 million the number of poor people in the country.” The USAID missed these in its report. The fiscal measures referred to are the expanded value added tax (EVAT), which raised the VAT from 10 percent to 12 percent and applied the EVAT on oil and power. The enactment of the EVAT was, in fact, a debt condition of the World Bank-International Monetary Fund (WB-IMF), designed to reinforce Philippine capacity for debt service. Of course, noodles for school children and cash doles or rice rations for some adults were also funded with EVAT.

During its eight-and-a-half years in office, the Arroyo regime governed the economy as an agent of the WB-IMF, enforcing the WB-IMF debt conditions, not the nationalist mandates of the constitution. These debt conditions are based on free trade, as prescribed by the Group of 8, and consist of liberalization, deregulation, privatization and level playing field. Pursuant to these debt conditions, the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira), which socialized (passed on to the Filipino people) all the liabilities of the National Power Corp. but privatized (sold to cronies and transnational corporations) all its assets, was enacted. Already a law for months now, the Cheaper Medicines Act has not benefited Filipinos up to this day. The executive order, recently signed by Ms Arroyo, imposing mandatory price caps will take effect this coming Aug. 15 yet and applies only to five drugs. It even exempts some drug firms.

Treason.

—AMADO GAT INCIONG
Unit 301 Union Square Condominium
#145 15th Avenue, Cubao,
Quezon City