Can Philippine Economy Withstand Crisis in 2009?

Overseas Filipinos will do their best and be making even greater sacrifices to maintain remittances to their families in the country. But remittance flows are still certain to weaken in 2009 and perhaps even significantly. At the very least there will be a slowdown in deployments to the US, Europe, Middle East, East Asia and seaborne work where the overwhelming number of overseas Filipinos go and a corresponding drop in growth of remittances from abroad. The corresponding drop in household incomes will have repercussions on domestic sales of consumer goods and services and even of residential real estate.

The job losses and squeeze on wages, benefits and remittances will combine with rising prices and have an immediate impact on household incomes that will cause poverty to rise. But the spending will also have further depressing effects – possibly beginning with domestic wholesale, retailing and food services as stores and restaurants face lower consumer spending. Additional pressure comes from the generalized slowdown due to overall economic uncertainty, lower consumption, tighter credit and depressed investments. The poorer business sentiment and tightening of capital flows is already reflected in steep stock market drops and much higher interest rates.

External financing for the country is dropping steeply. The US$912 million net outflow of foreign portfolio investments in the January-October 2008 period is a drastic reversal from the US$3.7 billion inflow in the same period last year. Net FDI is going in the same direction and fell by more than half to US$1.1 billion in January-August 2008 from US$2.5 billion in the same period in 2007. There is also a strong possibility that the rate at which official development assistance (ODA) is declining will worsen in the coming years as donor governments prioritize domestic financing needs. As it is ODA has already fallen 30% to US$9.2 billion last year from US$13.2 billion in 2001.

Immediate relief and strengthening the economy

There are two stages in coping with the crisis. The first stage is to arrest the slowdown in economic activity and the corresponding worsening in unemployment, incomes and poverty. This is critical especially since the country has already been suffering record unemployment, falling incomes and rising poverty in the last few years.

The effects of the economic downturn must be countered by stimulating the economy through expansionary and, importantly, equity-building policies. This includes:

1. Providing immediate emergency food, income and work relief.
2. Increasing public spending on health care, basic education and housing for the people and restoring real per capita social services spending to at least 1997 levels.
3. Increasing public spending on labor-intensive and rural infrastructure projects that will directly improve people’s livelihoods.
4. Public resources can be freed by:
· Suspending debt payments. This can begin with, but not be restricted to, debt to foreign creditors receiving bail-outs from their governments.
· Drastically reducing military spending.
· Cracking down on corruption. This is especially critical to prevent leakages into politicians’ electoral war chests for 2010.
5. Giving priority to Filipino producers in government procurement and aid-funded projects.
6. Implementing a P125 across the board nationwide wage hike and a PhP3,000 increase in government salaries.
7. Removing the VAT on oil products and increasing taxation of wealth, luxury goods and services, and on unproductive assets and transactions.
8. Reducing interest rates while ensuring that credit remains available.

There is also a need to immediately stabilize capital flows with capital controls, especially against outflows right now, and supporting the exchange rate. Capital controls must be used to defend against speculative attacks or financial transactions not related to trade and production.