Gloria Arroyo a ‘huge failure’ of the Philippines’ Economy

Malacañang Palace turned the tables on former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and branded her administration as "a huge failure" a day after the Arroyo camp came up with a critique citing the Aquino administration's supposed shortcomings in running the economy after taking over in 2010.

"Repeatedly, the performance of her government, the economic as well as the political, has been exposed as a huge failure over the past nine and a half years," Budget Secretary Florencio Abad told reporters.

Abad, who served as Aquino's campaign manager in the 2010 election, said that Arroyo had refused to acknowledge that she turned over a messy state of affairs to her successor.

"She was given the rare opportunity through People Power to lead differently but she turned her back on her big opportunity. We ended up suffering from those years of very bad governance," he added.

No research needed

Abad said one wouldn't have to do a thorough research to dispute the points raised in Arroyo's paper such as the substantial growth rate inherited by the Aquino government.

"The question is, what legacy? The numbers may have grown but if you look at the poverty incidence, it has worsened. Look at the employment numbers, it has worsened during their time," Abad pointed out.

In contrast, Abad cited the renewed confidence the credit ratings agencies have given the Philippines under President Aquino.

"In the 18 months of this presidency, we had five upgrades in our rating, the last one was the Standard and Poor's. We hope within the next two to three months there can be a ratings upgrade," Abad said.

"What is different from this administration's economic policy is that it is not detached from the measures on the improved governance especially transparency and accountability in the use of public funds which was absent totally in the last administration," he added.

The economy, student

In her paper titled, "It's the Economy, Student," Arroyo took a jibe at President Aquino's "obsessive pursuit" to demonize her and erase her legacy.

The paper was read by a University of the Philippines economics professor at a press conference at the Manila Hotel on Thursday.

According to her spokesperson, Elena Bautista-Horn, Arroyo wrote the paper "in her spare time" during her recuperation, hospitalization and hospital detention between October and December 2011.

According to Arroyo, the gains achieved by previous administrations "are being squandered in an obsessive pursuit of political warfare meant to blacken the past and conceal the dark corners of the present dispensation. Rather than building on our nation's achievements, this regime has extolled itself as the sole harbinger of all that is good."

Arroyo's claim that the "politics of division" was to blame for the current economic slump did not sit well with Abad.

"Politics of division? The Filipino people, as surveys and surveys show, have never rallied solidly behind a President as they have shown in support of P-Noy's (Aquino's nickname) anticorruption, good governance and poverty-reduction programs," Abad said.

Vote of confidence

Abad pointed out that even the international community had given the Aquino administration its "vote of confidence."

The budget chief then reminded Arroyo that she, too, could learn a thing or two from Aquino, an economics graduate and a student of Arroyo at Ateneo de Manila University.

"One important lesson that Arroyo should learn from P-Noy is that you cannot separate good governance from economic expansion. One needs the other," said Abad.

In her paper, Arroyo defended the gains of her nine-year presidency but took potshots at the performance of the Aquino administration.

Arroyo, now the representative of the second district of Pampanga who is under hospital arrest for electoral sabotage, accused Aquino of the very ills that bedeviled her presidency and for which she was unable to resolve.

She noted that Aquino was embroiled in "too much" politics. She decried the alleged "use of black propaganda and character assassination" to try to erase her legacy and undo the gains of her nine-year term.

Source:  Philippine Daily Inquirer

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In The Know: Philippines' Eagle - Monkey Eating Eagle

WINGED VICTORY. The Philippine Eagle's wing span of 7 feet is world's broadest. Pag-asa shows off at the eagle sanctuary in Davao City. EDDIE JUNTILLA/PHILIPPINE EAGLE

MANILA, Philippines—"Pag-asa" was conceived through artificial insemination and was laid in November 1991 by captive Philippine Eagle Diola using mate Junior's semen.

It was Diola's fourth fertile egg and the first to hatch.

The severe power crisis in Mindanao threatened the egg's survival, with the generator that automatically provided electricity during power outages conking out once every four hours.

Then Eagle Camp manager Domingo Tadena and his staff had to wrap the egg in a water-filled rubber pack, the temperature of which was carefully calculated and maintained.

A quake also briefly threatened Pag-asa's survival, as did an apparent thinning of the egg. The timely application of colorless nail polish proved effective in hardening the shell.

Pag-asa's eventual hatching in 1992 was the result of 10 years of research and experimentation on the country's national bird.

American Express Bank adopted Pag-asa in 1992 and has been providing financial aid to the Philippine Eagle Foundation (PEF), a Davao-based nonprofit, nongovernment organization dedicated to saving the endangered species and its rainforest habitat.

Before Pag-asa, only 37 eagles had been identified to exist in the Philippines—13 in captivity and 24 associated with wild nests.

As part of the efforts to boost the dwindling eagle population in the wild, Kabayan, an eagle also bred and hatched in captivity, was released to the wild in 2004—the first captive-bred eagle thus released.

The Philippine Eagle is a 3-foot-high rainforest raptor with a wingspan of 7 ft—the broadest in the world. Deforestation and hunting have threatened its survival.

It is estimated that only 400 pairs of these eagles remain in the islands of Luzon, Samar, Leyte and Mindanao. Thirty-six eagles, 18 of them bred in captivity, are housed at the PEF Center located at the foothills of Mt. Apo in Davao.

Ana Roa, Inquirer Research

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/128151/in-the-know-philippine-eagle

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Philippines, Peru among emerging-economy stars by 2050: HSBC

LONDON: The Philippines and Peru will be among emerging economies that become much more prominent in the next few decades, helped by demographics and rising education standards, with the Philippines set to leapfrog 27 places to become the 16th largest economy by 2050, HSBC predicts.

The bank expects China to overtake the United States as the world's biggest economy by 2050, and says strong growth rates in other developing countries will help drive the global economy.

"Plenty of places in the world look set to deliver very strong rates of growth. But they are not in the developed world, which faces both structural and cyclical headwinds. They are in the emerging world," the bank said in its report 'The World in 2050'.

It based its forecasts on fundamentals such as current income per capita, rule of law, democracy, education levels and demographic change.

HSBC projects the Philippines economy is poised to grow by an average of 7 percent annually over the next 40 years, while Peru should average annual growth of 5.5 percent over the same period.

The sheer pace of population growth in countries such as Nigeria and Pakistan means that these economies will swell in size to be included among the 100 biggest economies even if their incomes on a per-capita basis remain low.

HSBC said lower scores for rule of law in Latin America constrained its per-capita income projections for the region though it noted that Brazil was making headway in this aspect.

"The losers are the small population, ageing economies of Europe," added the bank, which says the demographics in much of Europe underscores concerns about the debt problems faced by many of the continent's governments.

'COPY AND PASTE' If sufficiently open to modern technology, developing countries could enjoy many years of robust GDP growth

although they could struggle for growth drivers once they have adapted to technological advances, HSBC said.

"The initial years of development could be described as 'copy and paste' growth, as countries open themselves up and adapt to the world's existing technologies. Once the 'copy and paste' growth is complete ... many economies struggle and get stuck in what is often known as the middle-income trap."

"But many of the countries we are considering are still at such an extremely low level of development that there are years of this 'copy and paste' growth ahead," it added.

It was here that many of the pessimism about China was misplaced, the bank argued.

"One of the most commonly cited reasons for concern about China is the high rate of investment as a percentage of GDP ...(But) we believe the strong rate of investment is entirely justified - providing China with much needed basic infrastructure," it said.

The bank said high levels of education in central and eastern Europe meant that the region could enjoy strong income per capita growth in the coming years before weak demographics eventually sap economic growth.

"While education rates are similar (to the West), the average income per capita in the central and Eastern Europe block is just one fifth that of the developed world. For this reason ... economies have great scope to catch up in income per capita," it said.

"Some of the smaller Eastern European countries - Romania, the Czech Republic and Serbia - (should) all do extremely well, particularly in the coming decade, before demographics prove to be more of a drag."

Source: From the Economic Times

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