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hopeless_race : Lets not just focus sa mga malversation of funds, sa mga overpricing..ating pagtuunan ng atensyon ang diskarte ng mga politiko na umuutang ng bilyon bilyon sa gobyerno."Small time" ang ibang pamamaraan ng pangungurakot kumpara sa pag-utang sa gobyerno ng bilyon na tunay ngang masasabing "pinaka big-time" at wala pang sabit.
hopeless_race : Mukhang tikom ang bibig ng lahat pagdating sa diskarte ng mga politiko sa pagutang ng mga bilyon bilyon sa gobyerno na tinatakbuhan. Itong pamamaraan na ito ang tunay na kumakain ng malaking porsyento ng ating national budget batay na din sa sinasabi ng world bank.
hopeless_race : Pakisilip naman po ang mga utang ni Villar sa BSP, ang mga utang nila RAMON JACINTO, RONNIE ZAMORA, JOE DE VENECIA at madami pang ibang mga pulitiko. Iilan lamang yan sa mga nababanggit sa balita na may mga malalaking utang sa gobyerno.
hopeless_race : Nagmimistulang "small time" lamang ang malversation of funds kumpara sa laki ng kinakamal ng mga umuutang sa gobyerno. At ito ay malinaw na natatakbuhan dahil hindi nga naman pwede makulong ang may-ari ng kumpanya sa pagkaka-utang lamang. Tunay na mga tuso at magagaling sa batas itong mga politiko natin. Masasabi ko na malamang lahat ng mga politiko ganito ang diskarte...wala pang kulong.
hopeless_race : PCIJ pkitingnan naman po ang mga gaya ni Villar na my malaking utang sa Gobyerno pero tinatakbuhan. Magtatayo ng kumpanya at uutang ng bilyon bilyon sa gobyerno ng walang balak bayaran. Tunay ngang walang nakukulong sa utang...ito ang prinsipyo ginagamit ng mga politiko ntin kaya nakakapagtaka kung san napupunta ang daang bilyong pera ng gobyerno.
hopeless_race : Sana itreat naman po ng media ang hacienda luisita at mendiola massacre na parang MAGUINADANAO MASSACRE. Ipublicized ang mga katotohanan at ipakita sa tao ang karumaldumal na pinaggagawa sa mga farmers dun. Untouchable po ba sila cory at danding at hindi magawang batikusin ng media about these two massacres?
hopeless_race : Kapag napaguusapan ang mendiola at hacienda luisita massacre ay parang walang nangyari at parang hindi big deal. Anu po ba ang pinagkaiba ng dalawang nabanggit na massacre sa maguindanao massacre?
hopeless_race : Its sad that we pinoys are blind to the fact of what had happened in mendiola and hacienda luisita. Ang tanong..bakit ang media ay hindi manlang matackle ang ganitong usapin? Takot ba sila kay cory at danding?
hopeless_race : Wilkins" brand, for P1.4 billion.-1999 Sugarland Multi-Food Corp. for P2.9 billion 2001- Purefoods Corp P7 billion P60 billion Coca-Cola ... See More 2002- Cosmos Bottling Corp. from RFM Corp. for P14.1 billion October 2008- GSIS' shares in Meralco worth PHP30 Billion. December 2008- country's biggest oil refiner, Petron Corporation. international company shopping spree: Australian boutique brewer J. Boag and Son for A$96 million in 2000. $97 million for Thai Amarit Brewery Ltd $35.5 mi
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jr_lad : rip mr. alecks pabico. you'll be greatly missed!
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sevens21 : tawag ka sa HOTLINE nila walang ANSWER grrr we need pa namn ng static info SSS Gising!!!
sevens21 : Gawa naman po kayo ng article about SSS. Pangit ng site nila dali ma blocked ng account
guest_899 : we must check the background of each potential candidates to avoid having another big mistake like GMA
guest_899 : congratulations to PCIJ, more power and God Bless !
jazzymuver : how did Arroyo swallow that kind of things!! how come that she just spend the money our countrymen for her own sake!!
guest_3664 : i would be glad if u can include the investigation of the manner public officials announce infra projects as per COA regulation. It is frustrating to see their faces on the tarpaulin instead of the prescribed information like name of project, date of implementation,amount of contract, source/s of fund, among other things. This is very rampant here in Marikina. Thanks and more power on your noble endeavors. We need people like you to have make our country great again.
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guest_4275 : i am currently doing a study for my paper regarding political killings in the philippines. i noted that there are no human rights reports during the Aquino and Ramos administration. could someone out there please send me reports regarding these matter? i do hope these reports came from reliable resources you could send it in my email; erikamariet@yahoo.comyour response would surely be appreciated. thanks everyone. god bless.
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Arroyo’s promised job creation
a ‘dismal failure’

Posted by: Alecks P. Pabico | July 24, 2006 at 8:33 pm
Filed under: Governance, SONA

DID the government achieve its job creation targets last year?

Unfortunately, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s much-applauded State of the Nation Address (SONA) today was silent on this matter. But in anticipation of the speech before Congress, the government had earlier announced that it was able to surpass its 2005 target of 2.26 million jobs by generating 2.38 million jobs. Four sectors — housing, small- and medium-scale enterprise lending, microfinance, and information and communication technology — led the way, even exceeding their full-year targets, along with the country’s economic zones.

An ad even appeared in today’s issue of the Philippine Star to quantify the gains in employment. Jobs generated by the sectors were as follows: 739,855 in housing; 506,838 in tourism; 211,196 in infrastructure projects; 327,942 in ecozones; and 62,750 in ICT, among others.

Two years after Arroyo declared in her inaugural speech to put job creation as the top priority of her administration’s ten-point agenda to address poverty, a theme she again revisited in her SONA last year, labor groups are however saying that the jobs crisis has taken a turn for the worse.

The Alliance of Progressive Labor (APL) and Labor Education and Research Network (LEARN) say that job creation has been weak on account of lackluster economic growth, with unemployment remaining at near record levels.

By sheer magnitude, the labor groups claim that the jobs crisis is the most important problem facing the nation today, with 12 million unemployed and underemployed Filipinos, an increase of two million in two years. On top of this, the working-age population is growing by around 1.3 million every year.

Below target

Reviewing the statistics, Clarence Pascual, APL economist, claims that Arroyo’s performance so far has been a dismal failure. Contrary to government’s pronouncements, he says the economy only generated 700,000 jobs in 2005 and 780,000 jobs in the first two quarters of 2006.

“Actual employment generation was halfway the government target of 1.5 million new jobs every year. It was considerably below the 1.3-million annual increase in the working-age population,” Pascual explains.

(See more tables on the job-creation performance of the Arroyo government here.)

Pascual traces the weak job creation to slow and low-quality economic growth with GDP growth only averaging 5.5 percent over the last four quarters. “(This is) below the 7-8 percent growth target required to generate enough jobs to bring down unemployment.”

At the same time, the bulk of the growth came from low-productivity sectors — agriculture and the informal services — which also reflected the pattern in employment creation as two-thirds of jobs generated during this period were in agriculture and retail trade.

Employment also declined in the industrial sector, including in manufacturing, which posted job losses as output growth stagnated due to low global and local consumer demand.

“Unabated increases in oil prices and rising global interest rates have dampened consumer demand. The poor external environment is compounded by higher local tax rates, deep cuts in public spending, and unresolved political problems,” says Pascual.

Weak employment creation has also meant fewer job opportunities for a rapidly growing working-age population. Pascual says the decline of the employed-to-population ratio from 596 (per 1,000 population) in 2004 to 591 in the first half of 2006 translates to some 1.2 million people added to the non-economically active population — a ratio which he sees as having no significant improvement over the long-term.

Mostly short-term employment

Even the House oversight committee chaired by Rep. Danilo Suarez, though acknowledging government’s achievement in its assessment of the Arroyo government’s performance last year, also observed that slightly more than half of the jobs created in 2005 (including more than 70 percent so far generated in 2006) have been short-term and contractual or seasonal in nature. Most of these jobs were in the tourism, housing and infrastructure sectors.

Economist Maitet Diokno-Pascual already noted this situation in her critique of Arroyo’s economic policies early this year. She said that 59 percent of working-age population are employed in jobs that are less permanent, seasonal/part-time, low waged or unpaid, or low-skilled.

The right question to ask, says Wilson Fortaleza, president of the Sanlakas partylist group, is “Do these jobs still exist?”

Fortaleza says the true picture is revealed by examining the kinds of jobs generated behind government’s employment statistics. These were among his findings:

Only a total of 2.939 million jobs were generated from April 2001 to April 2006 or an average of 587,800 a year.

Even the agricultural sector, which was identified as one that would generate more jobs, was only able to create an additional 167,000 new jobs from 11.253 million in 2001 to 11.420 million in April 2006.

The number of unemployed persons fell from 4.461 million in April 2001 to 2.930 million in April 2006. But this was mainly because of the introduction of the new definition where more than a million (1.503 million) unemployed persons were removed from the list beginning April 2005. Using the old definition, the unemployment rate today is at 11.8 percent rather than 8.2 percent.

Underemployment rate rose dramatically from 17.5 percent in 2001 to 25.4 in 2006 which is reflective of the kind of jobs that were generated over the period of time.

Under the new definition, the unemployed are those without jobs but have lost interest in looking for employment for at least six months — which Pascual similarly acknowledges as having allowed the government to realize a much lower unemployment rate. This, he says, explains why open unemployment eased to 11.3 percent in the first two quarters of 2006 from a high of 11.8 percent in 2004.

The sharp rise in underemployment since April 2005 has also erased the gains made since 2001. Total underemployment has gone up from 9 percent in 2004 to 12 percent in 2005 and 14 percent in the first half of 2006. The agricultural and service sectors, like in the areas of trade and transport where jobs are less permanent, have exhibited high underemployment rates.

Now at an 18-year high, this surging underemployment, explains Pascual, is important because it may indicate rising poverty incidence that is not yet reflected in currently available income statistics. “Underemployed workers carry a high risk of becoming working poor with incomes insufficient to carry themselves and their families above the poverty threshold,” he says, pointing to previous studies on poverty strongly relating underemployment with poverty incidence.

No better than Ramos and Estrada

Comparing Arroyo’s achievement in terms of creating new and permanent jobs to that of her predecessors — the Ramos and Estrada administrations, Fortaleza says she is “no better and is in fact far slower.”

“Between 1995 and 1998, Ramos was able to create 2.1 million jobs or a yearly average of 700,000, while the short stint of Erap has averaged 530,000,” he says.

Arroyo’s only saving grace in job generation has been the heavy outflow of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to almost all destinations abroad. In 2005, deployment almost reached the one-million mark at 981,677 OFWs.

“Without this, Arroyo would have faced a very serious unemployment problem and a dearth in dollar reserves,” says Fortaleza.

Download Fortaleza’s assessment here.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 24th, 2006 and is filed under Governance, SONA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 people have left comments

“Arroyo’s only saving grace in job generation has been the heavy outflow of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to almost all destinations abroad. In 2005, deployment almost reached the one-million mark at 981,677 OFWs.

“Without this, Arroyo would have faced a very serious unemployment problem and a dearth in dollar reserves,” says Fortaleza.”

Yes, I agree. But look at the scenario of OFW in Lebanon. This will show how insincere this Glue-ria are.

Her SONA is garbage!!!!! better she deliver her SONA at Mandaluyong (sa loob) baka meron pang maniwala.

flag-waver wrote on July 24, 2006 - 9:34 pm | Visit Link

“Arroyo’s only saving grace in job generation has been the heavy outflow of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to almost all destinations abroad.”

that’s her saving grace? she didn’t create those jobs… she merely claims credit for the “improved economy” resulting from the labor of the OFW community.

the only way she could claim better unemployment and underemployment figures was to redefine the terms to her convenience.

jester-in-exile wrote on July 25, 2006 - 3:55 pm | Visit Link

As expected, the official figures are suspect.

The usual question that crops up in my mind: How many of these have been double assessments?

Remember how her twisted statistics resulted in a heavily-padded housing creation figure in the past? The total figure was arrived at by summing up the number of houses built in gov’t low-cost projects plus those built by developers (which is private sector-initiated and should not have been counted), plus the number of housing loans granted by PAG-IBIG, plus, plus… Note that most PAG-IBIG borrowers can only afford low-cost housing and the resultant figure did not remove those that borrowed and bought gov’t housing. Neither is a loan from PAG-IBIG a guarantee that a house was actually built, right?

Number-padding is now a science perfected by Gloria. What with the way the classroom shortage was cut in half.

I have the latest industry figures (April 2006) showing manufacturing losing 24,000 jobs and construction losing 41,000 workers. These two industries are the biggest in terms of providing real salary to the most workers and I cannot imagine where the 700,000 new jobs plus are.

We also know how Cito Lorenzo, when he was adviser for jobs creation, declared that for every hectare of land given to a farmer via land reform, 10 new jobs are counted. Which of course is absurd. A farmer with no land of his own who later owns one is still one and the same farmer, no new opportunities are created! This formula was used to suggest that since DAR was
giving farmers land at about 100,000 hectares per year, Gloria has created 1 million jobs annually. Fantastic!

Also counted as 1 job is the hiring of contractual employees by rotation. Everytime a person signs his contract (usually 5 months maximum, then monthly afterwards) is counted one. A count of 8 jobs is computed, when in reality, its the same person signing one 5-month contract and seven renewals. Thus the number is padded 7 times! We know that a lot of companies now hire contractuals, figure how many are falsely added to Gloria’s employment numbers this way.

Don’t forget those who work 2-day-week shifts and replaced by 3 others for the remaining days. This should count only as one job.

The biggest anomaly is still the exclusion in the count of those who are not actively pursuing job search. It’s only in the Philippines where you are not counted as unemployed if you are not looking for one. This aggravates the anomaly because if the government cannot determine how many are actually not looking for a job, how can it subtract them from the list?

Stupid economist.

tongue in, anew wrote on July 26, 2006 - 7:32 am | Visit Link

With this negative and dismal figures, Mrs. Arroyo knew very well that she has only one thing to bail herself out of this embarrassing situation, TO CHEAT! With ardent prayers, of course, that the Filipinos would buy her lies, cheatings and manipulations, the categories she plays so well like a champion. But when it comes to everything that deals with people’s welfare, she knew nothing, so unconcerned, just plain moron in dealing with it!
That is a fact about Mrs. Arroyo!

Cecile Impens wrote on July 27, 2006 - 3:10 am | Visit Link

Right, Cecile. I forgot to post that even last year’s 5.5% GDP growth was a false figure. This was the estimate Malacañang announced in January to usher in another year of deception. The actual figure was less than 5% when all the data came in by April. This figure was of course downplayed but is now the official figure.

Still on jobs, it’s interesting to note that of the various sectors that should have contributed to this growth, which I concede is appreciable but still the lowest in the whole of East Asia, it’s attributed mainly to mining and banking.

But how many new jobs were created in mining and banking? NSO latest figures say mining has a total workforce of only 110,000 and banking, 330,000. But these are practically the same numbers from the previous year year. “Jobless growth” as economists call it.

The largest sector, agriculture, host to 12 million Filipinos, grew only 2% in 2005.

In the vaunted fastest-growing ICT sector, call centers led the growth but at a mere 62,000 all-in, the new jobs are insignificant.

I’ve already mentioned in the post above this that manufacturing and construction, supposed to be the biggest generators of new employment after agriculture, even lost 65,000 jobs.

Include those tens of thousands of entertainers from Japan whose contracts were no longer renewed owing to Gloria’s failure to convince Koizumi to go slow against our Japayukis after a stricter law on entertainers’ visas was passed.

Need I mention that the population figures also say that again, 1 million new entrants were added to the labor market, thus making competition for the few new jobs even stiffer.

Figure, how in hell’s name could the Great Pretender claim to have created 700,000 new jobs last year and 780,000 the first half of this year?

tongue in, anew wrote on July 27, 2006 - 6:24 am | Visit Link