Any economy that is dependent on other countries will always be in a precarious situation. More so if the other countries are in the Middle East. Just one crazy move of a sheik or an emir or a king, or any of their royalty there can suddenly erase the jobs of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Filipinos.
Take the Qatar situation. Just the severance of diplomatic relations with it by Saudi Arabia and its allies resulted in an order by our labor department banning deployment of Filipino OFWs to that country (Qatar). That could mean the financial ruin of families that had to mortgage whatever parcel of land they have, or had to sell their carabao, in order to raise the money for plane tickets or placement fees in the hope of landing a job with a decent salary in that desert country.
While there are measures adopted to make our local economy progress, they had been coming only in minute trickles. “Too little, too late,” comes to mind.
Since time immemorial, the Philippine economy is mainly about micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs). Yet nothing much was done to help these businesses grow. So the few big businesses with traditional big capital continued to corner business opportunities. This situation perpetrated the oligarchy that has always been the socioeconomic and political set up of this country.
There were of course rules or policies handed down by the government every now and then for banks to allot a part of their portfolio for the MSMEs but these were honored only in the breach instead of observance. They were merely lip service.
Now there is the P3 (see related story in one of the pages of this issue) lending program of the Department of Trade and Industry to wean away micro businesses from the neighborhood 5-6 money lenders who are sucking whatever small capital they have. Such effort is laudable but we will see if it works.
And this is just a very small measure. The big banks should be forced to devote a part of their loan portfolio to the informal sector—as the micro and small businesses are derisively called. This however has to be closely monitored.
Not only the banks. Big companies must be forced also to adopt such financing as their corporate social responsibility projects.
Otherwise becoming an OFW is the only hope for the ordinary Filipino. And the gap between the rich and poor will continue to widen.**