ILIGAN CITY--A lawmaker who represents the marginalized sector in the House of Representatives is urging government to rethink its economic policy that is hewed along the so-called globalization.

Anakpawis Rep. Joel Maglunsod made this call amid predictions the country’s economy “is teetering towards recession.”

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Based on the recent economic growth statistics released by government, economists are predicting that the country is in the edge of a recession with a measly 0.8 percent growth rate in the first quarter.

Second-quarter trends in economic activity do not also impress leading economists who also expect a similar growth downtrend for the period.

Maglunsod said that government should now heed the warning signs and adopt a radical shift of its economic policy direction.

“What we need now is to seriously look into the long time demand of the people for genuine agrarian reform and national industrialization,” he stressed.

He added that because of the jobs loss in the major markets of the country’s export products, which mainly drive its growth, sales are expected to dip and hence affect local employment.

Global trend of jobs loss

The Anakpawis solon noted a recent projection made by the International Labor Organization (ILO) showing a record level of global unemployment.

In its Global Employment Trends Update released May 2009, the ILO revised upwards its unemployment projections to levels ranging from 210 million to 239 million unemployed worldwide this year, or a global unemployment rate of between 6.5 and 7.4 percent.

Updated projections also showed some 200 million workers are at risk of joining the ranks of people living on less than US$2 per day.

The Trends report projects an increase of between 39 and 59 million unemployed people since 2007 as the most likely range.

The report underlined that the global labor force is expanding at an average rate of 1.6 percent, equivalent to around 45 million new entrants annually, while global employment growth decreased to 1.4 percent in 2008 and is expected to drop further to between 0 and 1 percent in 2009 as a result of the global recession.

The ILO also said that in the 2009-2015 period, around 300 million new jobs will have to be created just to absorb the growth in the labor force.

The agency cautioned that past experience suggested a considerable lag of four to five years on average in the recovery in labor markets after economic recovery.

That is why ILO wants employment creation and social protection to be the centerpiece of economic recovery policies by governments worldwide.

The national economy’s trend towards a recession is largely shaped by the downtrend of its export sales in recession-hit Europe and the United States.

“We must build a self-sufficient economy that will stand the effects of any global crisis,” Maglunsod pointed out. (Ryan D. Rosauro)