ONE lasting image in the recent ceremonial opening of oil and gas production in Alegria town, which is in west Cebu, is President Duterte opening the valve of one of the oil wells in Barangay Montpeller. Some questions linger, however. For example, that valve is owned by the firm China International Mining and Petroleum Company Inc. (CIMP), which is foreign. Obviously, we do not have the capability to do the oil extraction on our own.
What this means is that whatever is earned from the production of oil in the area will have to be siphoned by CIMP. According to Alegria Mayor Verna Magallon, 60 percent of the money will go to the National Government while 40 percent will go to CIMP, which of course will bring its profit back to its home country. But that is a product of our economic backwardness, one we have long accepted.
Yet should this continue to be our lot in the future? It will if we refuse to take the bull by the horn, sort of, and embark on a massive re-engineering of our economy. We have to veer away from the neoliberal policies that have tied us to economic backwardness, The way to go, aside from embarking on genuine land reform in the countryside, is national industrialization.
Let us set aside land reform for now. National industrialization is simply developing our capability to be self-reliant and therefore prosperous. We have long prided ourselves of being gifted by God with natural resources, meaning raw materials to feed our industrialization goals. Yet we sell these raw materials cheap to developed nations and buy from them the expensive processed product.
To better appreciate the point, let us refer to one aspect often referred to by nationalist economists. Industrialized nations had as their backbone when they were starting their economic spurt, their domestic steel industry. We all know how important steel is in industrialization. Yet our country’s steel industry has been overtaken by even our neighbors in southeast Asia.
Because of this, we export our iron ore and, to meet local demand for steel, export the said product, which is ironic. Yet there are sectors in our society who insist that it is cheaper to import steel products rather than do the manufacturing locally. We are thus placed at the mercy of globalized forces and our economic growth stunted. Which is the definition of economic backwardness.
I don’t think its a matter of talent. Filipinos have proven to be capable of anything, that is why our workers get recruited abroad. Given the focus and the support, we can have local firms capable of, say, extracting oil and natural gas from our own territory and not rely on foreign companies.
By the way, we all have heard of the so-called Malampaya funds talked about a few years ago at the height of the probe into the pork barrel scam linked to Janet Lim-Napoles. The funds were our share from the earnings from the Malampaya Deep Water Gas-to-Power project in the seas near Palawan. It is a joint venture of the Philippine National Oil Co. and, yes, giants Shell and Chevron.
National industrialization, anyone?