Editorial

Welcome change

A credit rating firm says the Philippine economy is likely to post slower growth rates this year, even below the government forecast of 3.7 percent.

Moody’s Investors Services says 2 to 3 percent is more like it. “[Declining remittances from overseas workers] is one of the biggest risks,” a Moody’s official warns, even as the positive outlook for the Philippines remains.

The global financial crisis has taken its toll on the workers’ host countries, dampening their wages and threatening their jobs. Because of this, domestic consumption—by these workers’ families receiving the remittances—is likely to be depressed, too, if it hasn’t been, already.

Economic managers have been pushing a stimulus package to ensure demand in the country in the near-term. According to plan, infrastructure projects take top priority; when completed, they promote ease of doing business. They also create jobs.

Only recently, employment numbers suffered blows from successive layoffs by companies in the semiconductor sector. The job cuts were in the thousands, but they were deemed relatively better, region-wise—at least since exports do not dominate our national income accounts as much as they do our neighbors’.

But the job losses are absolute; they are real and daunting for those who now find themselves without an income source. The government now scrambles to generate stable jobs for displaced workers. We hope the plan does not make a distinction between those who have been working on Philippine shores and those toiling in other lands, unable to find gainful employment here in the first place, and who would be forced to compete for local jobs anew.

This crisis may just begin reshaping the peculiar nature of Philippine labor. But if the result is less vulnerability to external shocks and increased productivity right within our own shores, amid thriving industries, then that would be a welcome change indeed.