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Member's Corner

CIELITO F. HABITO

Will the birds stay?

June 30, 2020

Everyone talks about the "new normal" and how we should all make sure it will be a "better normal." But there's a real tension between the urgent need to revive the economy and people's livelihoods as quickly as possible, versus making sure we "build back better." Some actually believe that the way to bring economies back on their feet is to set aside, at least temporarily, environmental and social standards that are seen to raise the cost of doing business, hence get in the way of restarting them as quickly as possible.

CIELITO F. HABITO

NO FREE LUNCH: The problem with shotguns

June 26, 2020

The problem with having a large informal sector-estimated in the Philippines to account for around 40 percent of GDP-is that those firms and workers are by definition not registered with, and therefore invisible, to government. Thus, remedial measures and assistance put together by government to help firms and their workers in times of need are not likely to reach participants therein. The World Bank, with its unique access to economic data across almost all countries spanning the globe, has documented the close association between informality and underdevelopment, seen in a wide range of attributes. These include widespread poverty, lack of access to formal finance, inadequate public health systems, and weak social safety nets. These vulnerabilities magnify the direct and indirect impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on people's livelihoods and overall welfare, and threaten to throw large numbers of people into extreme poverty. What is sad is that impressive gains had already been made around the globe in the last three decades to bring down the scourge of poverty; now it's all unraveling again, all because of a microscopic enemy no one saw coming.

CIELITO F. HABITO

NO FREE LUNCH: The problem with shotguns

June 19, 2020

After three months of immobilizing the economy to flatten the COVID-19 curve, we have nothing to show for it but a battered economy and a pandemic curve that's anything but flat. Perhaps thinking that lockdown was enough, crucial testing and tracing received less attention than our more successful neighbors gave. A reader described it as a shotgun solution that harmed too many people, when we could have used more focused rifle approaches like other countries used with far better results, and without choking their economies the way we did. The problem with shotgun solutions is that they make governments complacent and lazy, as it's far easier than figuring out and pursuing creative and effective rifle-focused cures.

EDILBERTO C. DE JESUS

[ANALYSIS] Balancing education risks during this pandemic

June 18, 2020

During the period of a pandemic, unhampered by vaccine, the resumption of normal classes exposes the school community to the risk of infection. Experts do not expect a vaccine to be widely available before 18 to 24 months. We need, therefore, to weigh the potential risks of a vaccine-less school reopening against the certain harm that will follow from a lengthy school lockdown.

CIELITO F. HABITO

NO FREE LUNCH: Burdensome government

June 16, 2020

It's hard not to conclude that the lack of definitive progress in the national fight against the pandemic traces mostly to government ineptness. We can't pin the blame on people for lacking the discipline of physical distancing, when top enforcers of that discipline are seen to defy it. It's also impossible to enforce such distancing in crowded poor settlements where high population densities preclude it - unless we provide refugee centers, as when natural calamities call for it. Why not now? The numbers are already out showing how the tradeoff between the lockdowns and people's economic welfare has hit hard on our economy, and more importantly, on ordinary Filipinos' lives. It's an outrage that we hardly have anything to show for incurring this tremendous cost, by way of significant progress in containing the virus.

CIELITO F. HABITO

NO FREE LUNCH: A digital new normal

June 12, 2020

As constantly pointed out by government economic managers, the Philippines entered the COVID-19 crisis in a position of relative economic strength. But there's one crucial matter in which we came in falling short: our digital connectivity. This has impacted on our ability to respond to and manage the pandemic, and will affect how we will come out of it and rise from the economic decline that the virus brought upon us.

CIELITO F. HABITO

NO FREE LUNCH: Boosting our farm co-ops

June 09, 2020

The biggest challenge in Philippine agriculture could well be the highly fragmented structure of our farms. Recently, I wrote of how nearly 9 out of 10 farms are under 3 hectares, and those less than a hectare account for the majority (57 percent). The 2012 Census of Agriculture counted 5.56 million farmholdings spanning 7.19 million hectares, averaging a mere 1.29 hectares each.

CIELITO F. HABITO

NO FREE LUNCH: Revisiting our debt penalty

June 05, 2020

Did you know that 15 years ago, about 9 out of every 10 pesos of revenues received by the Philippine national government just went to its debt payments? At that time, I likened our government to a wageworker whose friendly neighborhood moneylender comes on payday to take away 9 out of every 10 pesos in his pay envelope. Fast forward to 2020, and that "debt penalty" is no longer a prominent concern for our fiscal managers. Government is in fact proposing to lose money by lowering corporate income tax rates from 30 to 25 percent immediately, in the hope that this would help stimulate business recovery in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic-never mind that this would mean losing an estimated P42 billion immediately, and P625 billion over the next three years. Why this seeming bravado?

CIELITO F. HABITO

NO FREE LUNCH: Tracking poverty

June 02, 2020

Who should get the government's "ayuda" cash grants and who need not? The need to target assistance for households severely affected by the economic standstill during the COVID-19 crisis highlights the importance of having local governments possess a good information base on their residents' state of well-being. But its importance goes well beyond unusual times like this. An accurate socio-economic profile of a barangay, municipality, or city is the essential starting point for local development planning. To be of meaningful consequence, the development plan must address all the important dimensions of individual and family well-being. Poverty, after all, is not just about income, but also about deprivation in the human, social, environmental, political, cultural, and spiritual needs of a person. So how do we keep track of all these?

CIELITO F. HABITO

NO FREE LUNCH: Small farms, large farms

May 29, 2020

Of all food consumed worldwide, 70 percent comes from small family farmers, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. In the Philippines, 88 percent of all farm holdings are under 3 hectares, with those under one hectare comprising the bulk (57 percent), based on the last Agricultural Census in 2012. What's remarkable is that our average farm size has shrunk from 2.84 hectares in 1980 to less than half of that (1.29 hectares) by 2012, as the number of farms jumped by 62.6 percent from 3.42 to 5.56 million. Clearly, partitioning of farms among offspring as they are passed on to the next generation is leading to increased farm fragmentation through time.