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Consumers Domain Economists as painters
—Gloria Arroyo, July 2005 SONA This column has earlier featured a two-part point-by-point critique of Gloria Arroyo's State of the Nation Address (SONA) entitled “Responsorial SONA”. And this piece would not be a repeat of those. The quote above is only to put into proper perspective today's topic of my article. Information reported by the media and which is now a topic within the Freedom from Debt Coalition and other advocacy groups is the recent case of window dressing of the Philippine economy by the Arroyo administration. In fact, this disclosure is also a hot topic among investment circles, economic watchers and even credit rating agencies. Deliberate or not, the country's President, a US-educated economists as they brag, and her economic managers have in different occasions trumpeted the country's growth using flawed and erroneous data. And yes, those same data were the very foundation of Gloria's “poised-for-take-off” SONA spiel! Yearly, for the past three years, from 2002 to 2004, trade deficit figures were understated to the tune of more or less P4 billion! That's about 300% increase from the original figures. It shows that it is not only our budget deficit that is gnawing and growing, but our trade deficit as well. Of course, those erroneous data will have an impact on our national income accounts – the GNP and GDP figures. This impact would not only be limited on the past GNP and GDP figures, but more so on its potential impact on the country's economic fundamentals once the lack of credibility in government's economic data handling and reporting takes its toll. Below is an excerpt from a news posted in Inq7 website the first week of August. “The Philippines on Wednesday drastically revised its trade deficit figures for the past three years painting a far worse picture for the country's economy and trading position than first thought.” “According to the National Statistics Office (NSO) the 2004 trade deficit was 4.36 billion dollars from the previously stated 713 million dollars. The 2003 deficit was revised to 4.24 billion dollars, up from 1.27 billion dollars while for 2002 the trade deficit was revised to 4.03 billion dollars from the previously reported 218 million dollars.” Also, here is an excerpt from a Tribune news article: “The Arroyo administration has been handing out widely skewed data for the past three years and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) yesterday said the huge revisions show the trade deficit figures were understated by up to $3.5 billion per year in the past three years.” “It is a case of garbage in, garbage out. If the data we have been feeding into the research has been garbage all these years, then all our economic research output has been garbage.” Now maybe today is another time for Gloria to call for “ang dagdag! ang dagdag!” and attempt this time to pad our economic figures more, so as to hide these recent disclosures and paint a brighter picture of our economy. There is actually no better way to refute the government's grandstanding on its economic performance than the plight of the ordinary Filipinos themselves. The fact is no amount of glowing economic picture can wipe away hunger from a common worker's stomach. This revelation only confirms what is already apparent. So, to those who really think that our economy is really on the verge of taking off, please raise your right hand. And one more thing -- now that we have seen what it'll be like when economists try their hand in painting, I strongly suggest that they should be banned from holding paintbrushes altogether. * * * * * Greetings to all my colleagues in FDC-Iloilo and all its member organizations (Atty. Roming, Ted, Melinda, Joy and all comrades); to RISE; to my UI Law buddies (Ian, Wency, Tibur, Julius, R-nell, Jaja, Mala, Nikos? and all 3-B pipol); and to all my out-of-the-ordinary friends (Zherry, Liza, Tata, JJ, Perl, Jinki, Shak, Elaine, etc.). (For comments and reactions send SMS to 0919-348-6337 or email to ianseruelo@yahoo.com.) |
