Wednesday, October 24, 2007 Editorials: Downward flow of development
THERE has been talk in the past months that the Philippine economy has immensely improved and that our growth rate is rather impressive.
The recent influx of foreign investors into our shores and the strength of the Philippine peso against the United States dollar strengthened this perception.
Largely credited with this phenomenon is the rising number of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) remitting their earnings into the country.
However, even as the country’s economic condition has been heralded as moving upwards, there remains the impression that this is enjoyed only at the higher level of the social scale and has still to seep down to the ground level.
Up to now, economic observers say, the nation’s rural sector has still to feel such growth.
Productive investment
Towards this end, government’s economic planners are determined to utilize a significant portion of OFW earnings for investment, possibly to develop the rural sector.
In fact, certain moves are being made to achieve such goal.
One of these is the proposed revival of the earlier Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) plan to harness overseas workers’ “large remittance flows for productive investments.”
The plan is to encourage OFWS to invest part of their earnings for the purchase of retail treasury bonds.
Financial literacy
A BSP official revealed that the Overseas Welfare Workers Administration and the BSP are “considering the holding of overseas road shows on financial literacy, focusing on countries that host big Filipino communities.”
Right now, this financial literacy program is held only in the country.
The OFW bonds sale aims to raise at least $1 billion.
The amount invested in various enterprises could further boost the local economy.
Hopefully, it could start the downward flow of economic development.
Socially oriented
In a recent talk before an economic forum in Manila, one of the country’s respected economists, Cielito Habito, said that it is important to extend help to small and medium scale enterprises in order to bring about a grassroots based economy that “should be an alternative to the country’s capitalist economy.”
Then a “shift from a profit-driven to a socially oriented economy” that would benefit our rural poor, maybe attained.
