If you still don?t believe that the global economic crisis has hit our shores, ask 3,000 newly laid-off workers in Cavite. Intel Corp., the high-tech electronics giant that has been manufacturing computer chips and other electronic hardware in the Philippines since 1974, is closing down its General Trias plant, which only last November employed that many Filipinos.

The Santa Clara, California-based company said it was laying off up to 6,000 workers in four plants, one each in the Philippines and Malaysia and two in the US, including the remaining 1,800 in its 20-hectare facility in Gateway Business Park in Barangay Javalera, General Trias, between now and the end of 2009. In November, Intel?s Cavite plant shed 1,200 jobs in what many thought was a prelude to the company?s closure of its local manufacturing operations.

The shutdowns were the company?s response to current hard times. Intel said it had to ?align its manufacturing capacity to current market conditions,? after reporting losses of up to 90 percent in profits by the end of 2008 due to slumping worldwide demand for computers and other consumer products that use its chips.

The Cavite assembly and testing facility manufactures integrated circuits known as flash memory, as well as microprocessors and chipsets that are marketed worldwide. Flash memory is used in cellular phones, and is also an important component in computer manufacturing, automotive control units, digital cameras, photocopiers, games and other household applications, while microprocessors and chipsets are the brains that power computers.

Intel was one of the pioneering firms that built up the Philippines? electronics and semiconductor export market, which now accounts for 60 percent of all exports of this country. The company recently said it was responsible for generating 0.3 percent of the Philippines? entire gross domestic product from its local operations alone.

Intel?s Cavite plant has been the Philippines? number one single exporter for the past five years, a reflection of its investing a total of $1.3 billion here?including $100 million just five years ago to upgrade the General Trias facility. In Cavite, aside from being the biggest single employer, Intel accounts for nearly a fourth of all the province?s exports, which come from its many export-oriented business parks.

The virtual dismantling of Intel?s Philippine operations (the company still maintains a small marketing operation based in Makati) is the biggest setback so far for the electronics-driven export industry and the most massive layoffs of workers since the global financial crisis started last year. Only last month, another electronics pioneer in the Philippines?Dallas-based Texas Instruments, which maintains a manufacturing facility in Baguio City? laid off 400 workers out of a workforce of 2,300.

And the Intel plant?s closure comes on the heels of a World Bank report issued this week that warned that both money sent home by Filipinos working abroad and export income from our undiversified, electronics-based export industry would suffer serious declines in 2009.

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Intel?s decision to pull out of the Philippines altogether surprised some who thought the company was just moving its manufacturing operations to nearby Laguna province. As it turns out, Intel factories in China and possibly Vietnam will pick up the slack caused by the closures in Cavite, Penang, Santa Clara and Hillsboro, Oregon.

But as early as last November, Intel had already warned the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it expects the global crisis to deeply hurt the electronics industry and cause an industry-wide slump that would not go away early. And Intel, which makes 80 percent of all the world?s microchips, said it was cutting spending and new investments because the computer industry supply chain was aggressively reducing component inventories since buyers were not buying any new electronic products.

The Cavite closure also effectively shot down the rosy predictions of electronics exporters that a turnaround was already in the offing. Speaking in reaction to the Baguio layoffs last month, Ernie Santiago, president of the Semiconductors and Electronics Industries in the Philippines Inc., said the industry was already ?preparing for the upturn.?

But Intel?s Cavite shutdown?and its deleterious effects on the Philippine economy?in the midst of the continuing crisis had been foretold by the World Bank in a report issued just this week. ?A single product group, electronics, still commands a significant share of total export [60 percent]. This lack of export diversification, coupled with a specialization in an industry with significant and prolonged cycles, is a major risk for the economy in 2009,? the Bank said.

Beyond the loss of 3,000 jobs once held by the people directly employed by Intel in Cavite, there are also the company?s suppliers and other people in allied industries who rely on the factory for work. Some estimates have put that number at around 34,000?not including the families of all these people who will have to do with a lot less now that the General Trias plant is going to be closed.

More than anything else, the departure of the country?s biggest exporter should rouse those in charge of reviving the stalling economy that the time to act to avert the spread of the crisis is now. And if more people lose their jobs without any hope of finding alternative means of earning money in the near future, the results could be catastrophic for a country that is almost perpetually teetering on the edge of turmoil.