President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. promised economic recuperation for the first year of the post-pandemic time in his July 2022 State of the Nation Address (SONA). His administration forwards this idea that if economic policies are “friendlier” to foreign interests, then the country will have a chance of recovering; they lied, and even narratives from past administrations can attest to this. In truth, the problem lies in his economic management which fosters economic backwardness. Marcos should by now have known that he will not find actual progress in foreign and private reliance.
Marcos painted a new color at the pulpit of Batasang Pambansa on his first SONA. He presented himself as a calmer and “soft” leader–an illusion that, after the tumultuous pandemic years, his installation at Malacañang marks recovery. Marcos presented the Medium Term Fiscal Framework (MTFF), a collection of eight agendas on food security, international trade, resource management, healthcare system, identification systems, education, government modernization, and tax laws. The MTFF will then guide Congress in determining and legislating bills for the first half of his administration.
But as hard as Marcos tries to paint MTFF as new, his own words will only continue to fail him. In his SONA last year, the president boasted the promises of MTFF to cut down government borrowing, stimulate further economic growth, and hopefully slim down the poverty rate. Yet in the same breath, Marcos said that the MTFF was framed after Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippine Development Plan—a scheme that birthed policies such as the Rice Tariffication and TRAIN Law that only pushed Filipinos to the brink of destitution.
It has been a year since golden promises were spoken, and no shift is in sight. Instead, as of March 2023, 33 million Filipinos continue to live in poverty. This figure translates to the worsening quality of life in the country; unequal access to vital services such as health, education, food, and decent housing. The underemployment rate–the number of people working fewer hours than their level of subsistence–still counts 2.42 million Filipinos, denoting their inability to purchase even basic necessities.
All these concerns are on top of the true color of MTFF: policies that serve the interest of the rich and other of allies of Marcos. Under his scheme, a stronger public-private partnership (PPP) is established. The first step is to expand the PPP Governing Board, allowing a representative from the private sector to have a voting power on the distribution of projects to firms. The Ayala Corporation, for one, has gone gung-ho in PPPs since 2011 and promised more under Marcos. The presence of their executive at the board does not bear confidence. This has been criticized by groups, including the think-tank IBON Foundation, saying that reliance on PPP for services will displace the public because of increased service fees set by private firms.
The UP Philippine General Hospital, for one, is planning to build a cancer institute through PPP. But the 2022 Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) of the PPP Law allows the contractor to set the fee for 30 years, essentially owning the establishment. This paints a picture of how health will become less accessible to Filipinos, even in public hospitals, instead of maximizing public funds to build facilities and implement healthcare programs to aid Filipinos.
However, the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) has different things in mind about development. NEDA Chief Arsenio Balisacan holds that if the government capitalizes on private firms, there will be an increase in job opportunities and lesser government fund outflow. Yet earlier policies—which the current economic managers crafted themselves—allowed unsolicited bids that are unrealistically low, only to balloon the price once the construction begins.
Marcos’s economic managers also plan to relax taxes for foreign and private investments to appear “friendlier.” But to stabilize the national treasury, the brunt would have to be passed to ordinary Filipinos by remedying tax collection.
For Marcos, this is not a problem; his friends will benefit from it, anyway–thus the need to assess his policies is urgent. His own set of cronies, including big-time families like the Lagdameos, Tan, and Aranetas who own major infrastructure corporations, are in the game. These top-strata names will just become richer in the MTFF as more untransparent projects and new taxation roll out.
The president’s promise that “no sector will be left behind” under MTFF is a lie because it plans to move forward without realizing that inequality perverts the economy. The framework only cares about big industries, which aligns with the fact that most members of his close circle are landlords, including his own brother-in-law, Greggy Araneta. Agricultural sectors will also have to compete against lax importations. This, on top of continuous state attacks against farmers and fisherfolks and the government’s lack of initiative for genuine agrarian reform.
The Philippines tallied with a 40.3 Gini coefficient or income inequality, the third-highest disparity rate in the Asia and Pacific region, according to the Asian Development Bank. The World Bank traces the cause to the concentration of economic policies towards industrial sectors, particularly those owned by the rich. The agricultural sector suffers the most in this environment, with a 30.6 percent poverty incidence as of 2021. And for the following years under the MTFF, this predicament will be propped up further.
In his second SONA, Marcos will spout a new set of promises, ones that paint a new picture but with the same illusion. If Marcos–as he said during the campaign and SONA 2022– really wants to invoke change, he needs to do more than just lip service; this will not get the country anywhere.
Preempting his speech, the Peoples’ Summit–a congress of sectoral groups–drafted the People’s Agenda that forwarded plans centered on land reform and localized economic planning. Instead of allocating 10 percent of GDP to the unnecessary construction compulsion, the document asserts that the government should align its budget with the needs of agriculture, local industries, and the education system. It also asserts the need for natural resource management and transparent government.
Through the People’s Agenda, the government, then, could allocate funds towards creating initiatives that will benefit people through social services, instead of wasting the national budget on unnecessary projects that will only fall into conglomerates’ pockets. These are recurring calls from the people that the current administration continues to silence, tag as rebellion, and respond to with human rights violations.
Marcos and his economic managers have to rethink their steps moving forward; his one year in office proves that they are failing at this “progress.” The administration can create a beautiful image all they want, but time continues to unravel its deeds: selfish reasons and servitude. In SONA 2023, Marcos does not need to create more fakery. The time to burn this illusory image is now; before an irreversible impact falls upon us. ●
