A change in attitude,
a change in altitude

BEFORE attending the 3rd Global Filipino Networking Convention in Cebu City, I felt the same doom and gloom about the Philippines that anyone who regularly reads the Manila dailies would feel.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo presented a vastly different picture, however, when she spoke at the Cebu Global Convention. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country is up by 6.2 percent, exports are up by 19.5 percent, tourist arrivals are up by 27 percent and the stock market has become more active, she reported.

This new vibrancy of the Philippine economy was evident in Cebu where employment and exports were way up. Cebu City Mayor Tommy Osmeña reported that Cebu City alone exported $3B in goods in 2004 and would exceed that amount in 2005.

I visited one furniture maker in Cebu City where craftsmen working in open air nipa huts were busy filling a $10-M purchase order from the Thomasville furniture stores in the US to make high-end quality furniture.

One condominium resort in Cebu has sold virtually all of its 250 units to overseas Filipinos and interest was high among the global delegates to invest in a Philippine condo.

President Arroyo shared with the delegates her belief that micro-finance projects for the poor would alleviate poverty in the countryside. She asked overseas Filipinos to deposit at least $1,000 in a Philippine bank as this would earn as much interest as it would in a US bank (if not more) and would provide the banks with additional capital to invest in micro finance projects.

Manila Standard columnist Antonio C. Abaya grudgingly acknowledged (as much as any Manila columnist would dare do) the positive accomplishments of the Arroyo administration adding that "there are supposedly less people experiencing hunger now than there were three months ago, there are said to be more people optimistic now about their future than there were one year ago."

But, Abaya asked, "why is there still wailing and gnashing of teeth?"

It isn't just "political bad-mouthing from the outs trying to replace the ins," he wrote. In his view, it has to do with failing to "catch up" with the rest of the country's Asian neighbors (South Korea, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand) where GDP growth is in the 8-12 percent per annum range over the last 20 years.

The Philippines exported $34.6-B worth of products in 2003 compared to the high of China with $436.1-B and the low of Thailand with $76-B. The problem is that China's annual birth rate is 0.61 percent and Thailand's at .91 percent while the Philippines population growth rate has remained unchanged at 2.36 percent.

President Arroyo has promised to add 10M new jobs by the end of her term in 2010. But, critics charge, that will only be enough to cover the needs of the added population.

"Success for this country," Abaya claimed, "will have to be measured in terms of not being overtaken by the next Asian tiger, Vietnam, after having been overtaken by everybody else." While Vietnam's exports were only half that of the Philippines, "for the past eight or nine years, Vietnam's GDP has been growing at from 7 to 9 percent per annum" and its birth rate is less than half that of the Philippines.

Even when there's good news, people find a way to look at the glass as half full. One speaker at the Global Convention, Dr. Edward Valeau, suggested that "a change in attitude will result in a change in altitude."

While in Manila, I spoke with many friends who had been graduates of the school of the First Quarter Storm 35 years ago this week. They were now politically all over the map.

Most were critical of President Arroyo while a few were supportive. One high school classmate, Mario Taguiwalo, asked in a recent essay in the Philippine Daily Inquirer: "Can President Arroyo lead the nation to finally make the crucial steps to turn away from the more than 40 years of failure that came before her? Or will the masses lose heart in this elected government and turn elsewhere for their salvation soon?" He clearly believed that President Arroyo would fail.

Another friend from our activist days, Bobby Tiglao, responded that President Arroyo has had to deal with a communist and Muslim insurgency that the other Southeast Asian countries have not had to contend with and that her 10 point program would improve the Philippine economy and create ten million new jobs by focusing on agriculture, telecommunications and tourism.

But in order for the Philippine economy to improve, the Philippine educational system has to be drastically upgraded to make Filipino students globally competitive.

The Philippine Department of Education reported that the country's 17 million public elementary and high school students are packed into about 41,734 public elementary and high schools, short by at least 57,000 classrooms. This classroom gap has forced "double shifts" in public schools, which are under pressure to accommodate all classes, without cutting short the time allotted for each subject.

Philippine Secretary of Education Florencio Abad noted that the budget for education is pitifully low, only $138 or P7,700 per student per year, while Thailand, in contrast, allocates about $852 per student (P47,700). The United States and New Zealand spend about $2,240 (P125,500) per student each year.

While most countries in Asia have increased their pre-college education to 13 years from kindergarten to 12th grade, the Philippine public school offers an average of only 10 years -- six years of elementary school and four years of high school. There are moves afoot to add two more years to the Philippine public school curriculum -- seven years of elementary and five years of high school.

In a recent survey of 45 countries on high school "competencies," the Philippines ranked 41st, beating only South Africa, Ghana, Botswana and Saudi Arabia. On the elementary level, out of 25 countries, the Philippines placed 23rd, beating only Tunisia and Morocco. In the 2003 survey involving second-year high school students in 38 countries on "Trends in International Mathematics and Science," the Philippines placed 36th.

The top five in this survey were the Philippines' neighbors: Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan.

The results of the 2004 High School Readiness Test were depressing: only 0.64 percent of the public elementary students scored 75 percent or better, meaning that only 8,000 students out of 1.2 million examinees passed. In the "self-assessment test for English," only 19 percent of Philippine teachers scored 75 percent or better, which means that no more than 10,000 out of around 51,000 teachers passed the test.

Only 4% of the country's public schools have facilities that provide Filipino students with training and access to the Internet.

The private sector has come in to help. At the 3rd Global Convention, the Ayala Foundation officially inaugurated the Project GILAS ("Gearing up Internet Literacy and Access for Students") it initiated with the Makati Business Club and a consortium of 28 private corporations and foundations. It aims to make all Filipino public school students Internet literate.

The Philippines clearly needs to allocate more of its resources to education. But it is moving in the right direction, perhaps not as fast as it could or should. But the constant sniping and undermining of positive efforts to improve the country's economy will only make the doomsayers' prophecies self-fulfilling.

So enough already. Send books to the Philippines. Deposit $1,000 in a Philippine bank. Visit the country and spend your hard-earned dollars. There are enough people cursing the darkness. It's time to light a few candles.

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