Is Our Country Going to the Dogs?

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

Reports say foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow declined middle of this year.

So with a diminishing FDI, is this rambunctious country where people especially the dirt poor, breed like rabbit, going to the dogs?

Arf, arf, arf, no!

                                                             Overseas Foreign Workers

As long as we have overseas foreign workers (OFW) that grow by three to five percent a year and sent tens of billions of U.S dollars yearly (U.S $28 Billion or P1.4 Trillion last year) because of the incompetency of the political leadership to create employment atmosphere, we will have laborers and electricians that would be building these OFW houses and condominiums, we will have teachers and restaurant owners to serve the college children of these workmen, and we will have salesladies to serve big malls like SM and Robinsons where the OFWs and their family buy their fancy branded clothes and relished themselves with foods at those franchised restaurants there.

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So we are not going to the dogs like Venezuela where the authoritarian communist wannabe style government of Nicolas Maduro depends primordially on oil exportation thus many people there now wallow into abject poverty with 700% inflation- the highest in the world because the son of a gun Maduro and his predecessor the foul-mouth former Paratrooper Hugo Chavez did not diversify. 

Despite the absence of oil that better off the lives of those people in petroleum rich countries, Filipinos would continue to be resilient as long as they speak American English.

They would continue to serve as servants, laborers, and medical workers abroad and send their American dollar denominated salaries to their families in the country.

                                    Information Technology –Business Process Outsourcing

We Filipinos would survive because the tens of billions of dollars (US$22 Billion or P1.1 Trillion last year)  15 percent yearly growth of the 1.2 million workers Information Technology –Business Process Outsourcing, our sunshine industry, keep this country economically buoyed.

It also benefits indirect employment like those in coffee shops, cigarette vendors (have you seen those red eyed BPO agents puffing a stick outside their buildings?), construction sites that build more IT-BPO buildings, beer joints that hired poor people from Mindanao and Visaya Islands as waitresses and guest relation officers.

Because our country is in poor spot No. 5 among the major hosts of foreign direct investment (FDI) where Singapore led the pack of five major South East Asia (SEA) countries on the 2014 data of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD),   are we going to the dogs?

 Before you answer that dog’s thing JesusMariaHusep, please browse hereunder the five countries and the FDI U.S dollars they snared:

Singapore: $67.5 Billion; Thailand: $12.6 Billion; Indonesia: $22.6 Billion; Vietnam: $9.2: Philippines $6.2 Billion.

To repeat the poser lest you forget: Are we going to the dogs with our pathetic FDI in dollars?

My answer: Hell no!

On my column titled Culprit why Filipinos are Poor: Population Explosion I said there that if we aggregate those foreign monies that include those sent yearly by our OFWs, the Philippine is ranked No.2 with a total of U.S $34.60 Billion among the five major SEA countries.

“Our country is a recipient of a staggering U.S $34.60 Billion if we include the U.S $28.40 Billion (World Bank) remittances sent by the millions of overseas foreign workers (OFWs), the ballyhooed economic saving grace of the country, in 2014,” an excerpt of that column I wrote.

These billions of pesos were the multipliers effects that cause the uneducated or those who skipped the lecture on their economics subject to pose in the vernacular: Bakit kung mahirap ang Pilipinas, bakit nagsusulputan ang mga SMs at Robinsons sa mga bayan at siyudad ng Pinas? Bakit andaming mga SUVs at mga brand new cars sa Pinas?”

This Philippines No. 2 SEA ranking float the Philippines economy to survive despite our lethargic share of FDI, thanks but no thanks to the 60-40%  xenophobic business equity sharing mandated by the Constitution  that favor the Gokongweis and Sys and made them more richer  while we alienate those tycoons in other countries to come here and give them (the chink eyed Philippine taipans) real competition so we can oblige those “no chink-eyed” Manuel Pangilinan of Smart and the Ayalas of Globe to speed up their snail pace internet capability otherwise they wither or “pupulutin sila sa kangkongan” in Filipino.

The 100% foreign ownership atmosphere made what Mainland China, Thailand, and Singapore as economic juggernaut in the region.

The FDIs were the sparkplugs of their vaunted economies.

This makes the people there better. This makes the goods and services there cheaper because there are more sellers who sell high quality but cheaper goods and services. 

We call this as competition that should make capitalist country better than those Marxist and Communist States like the sorry defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, the present economically inefficient Cuba and North Korea that could not provide enough for their people because they lack dollars to import goods to complement their local products.

Have you heard about the shortages of medicines in Cuba despite the Castros crowing to the globe the world class health system of the Reds there?

Was that what Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes preached when they wrote Wealth of the Nations and The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, respectively?

Despite the absence of 100% foreign ownership to attract FDI, this country will continue to survive economically because of the OFWs and IT-BPO agents.

The problem however many of them worked like slaves there while their spouses here commit adultery and those agents work at nighttime dealing with rude Caucasian customers and deprive them about the beauty and health brought by sunshine.

(You can read my selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)