TIGER OF ASIA DAW, MUST READ! A paper presented by the economist Jose Enrique Africa, executive director of IBON, during the UP forum on Saturday, noted that despite the claimed economic growth, the number of unemployed and underemployed Filipinos increased by over one million from10.9 million in April 2010 to 11.9 million in April 2013—the most number of unemployed and underemployed in the country’s history. Meanwhile job creation has been falling drastically—from 1.4 million in April 2011, to 1.0 million in April 2012, to a negative 21,000 in April 2013. Between April 2012 and April 2013, agriculture lost 624,000 jobs; its total share in total employment is now down to 31.3 percent as of April 2013; manufacturing is down to 8.4 percent. While Africa said the collective worth of the 40 richest Filipinos had risen to $47.4 billion in 2012—equivalent to over one-fifth of GDP that year, Prof. Ben Lim told the same forum that 25 million Filipinos or 27.9 percent of the population are living on 62 US cents a day or less, and wages of those employed have not caught up with inflation. He quoted Aquino’s Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan as saying the high consumption that boosted the GDP growth rate came from remittances of the Filipino overseas workers, which, according to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, constitute “the backbone of the economy.” However, to eradicate poverty, at least 4 million jobs must be created every year at home, said Balisacan. In previous SONAs, Aquino succeeded in distracting public attention from the substance of his address or the lack thereof by the strength of his political rhetoric, which never failed to remind the audience that he was in power and everyone else was not, and by the use of certain cheap devices to elicit a popular response from the crowd. But he has consistently failed to offer any vision or road map for the nation, or even a legislative program for the Congress to work on. Nor has he shown any sign that the presidency has matured him
Posted on: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 21:40:43 +0000
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