Close to collapse

"Crunch Time," The Evening Paper
Issue of 22 May 1996

It seems, and sadly so, that crunch time comes creeping up on us when we least want it. Section editors who also happen to be columnists know this only too well. Delinquency is an option preferable to mediocrity.

The other very real reason for my delinquency is a lack of success stories to relate. I was still plowing through the reams of copy that landed like confetti on newsdesks all over the world after the Habitat II conference in Turkey, only to get crowded out of vital space by political issues and election results.

Besides, no international conference is all substantive negotiation and productive discussion. Politics always manages to rear its ugly head into the most urgent of human conferences. Habitat II was no exception.

******

But as crunch times go, why the apocalyptic feeling that the human race and all human activity are sadly plunging into ultimate destruction? Could 2000 and a new millennium, if there will be one, have anything to do with it? Or is it a death wish of the most horrific proportions?

Listen. A very recent World Bank report on poverty, which came out only last Sunday, says that more than one-fifth of the world's population lives on less than $1 a day.

The report admits that the overall incidence of poverty is declining but adds that the number of people living on less than $1 a day increased from 1.23 billion in 1987 to 1.31 billion in 1993.

"About 90 percent of the world's poor in the developing world are located in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Indochina, Mongolia, Central America, Brazil, and the hinterland provinces of China," the report says.

Of these regions, two--South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa--get special focus in the World Bank report. And while we may manage, on a good day, to shrug our shoulders about Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia is not too far away.

"Today, South Asia is home to a quarter of the world's population, but it accounts for 39 percent of the world's poor," the bank says, even as it traces the high poverty rate in the region to high population growth and slow recovery from fiscal and balance-of-payments difficulties. That's neither here nor there for advocates of one cause or another and for critics of the WB-IMF twin monsters.

So, let's stick to the disquieting statistics. The percentage of the population living on less than $1 a day in South Asia declined slightly from 45.4 percent to 43.1 percent, but the overall number of poor people increased by 34.8 million between 1987 and 1993.

Out of every 12 children born, at least one is expected to die before reaching the age of one. One-third of the world's maternal deaths occur in South Asia.

For Sub-Saharan African nations, the task would appear almost insuperable: These nations must register growth rates of 6.5 percent merely to reduce poverty. The Philippines, from '80s experience, knows how difficult it is to even reach a positive 2.

Nor can we easily equate reduction of poverty with a 6-percent growth rate: No developed or developing country, says the World Bank report, entitled "Poverty Reduction and the World Bank--Progress and Challenges in the 1990s," has totally eradicated poverty.

While the bank has set goals for its lending programs that it hopes will boost the human capital of the poor and provide them with safety cushions, "more needs to be understood about the political and social economy of change and its effects on poverty reduction efforts."

That's a definite thumbs-down from the bank for its own efforts at reducing poverty in the world today.

******

Now, if we think the world is suddenly going to grow lush and bountiful simply because the human race is about to collapse from poverty and hunger, then we need to undergo a very serious rethink.

Another international document says at least 150 million of the world's people will be victims of drought and overexploitation of the once-green earth. The document, distributed at a four-day United Nations conference in Lisbon, bluntly states: "The population of the planet is expected to double in the next 50 years. The trend for the overexploitation of renewable resources could accelerate at a pace without precedent in the history of humanity."

The problem is that while the prospect of lush land turning to desert is enough to bring a global cabal of experts very near crunch time, other cabals of experts all over the world prefer to preach only in terms of high-priced, high-rise investments.

What about investing in the land, in farms and plantations, in once again nurturing the earth, the seas, the forests? It is not just being environmentally aware, it is also showing business acumen and historical foresight.

-- NBT

Self-sufficiency in food

Editorial, The Evening Paper
Issue of 15 January 1996

It says a lot about our priorities and values, the fact that the front pages of yesterday's morning dailies were dominated by huge photos of the returning half of a controversial, much-publicized, troubled coupling.

Buried in the inside pages and meriting no pictorial support whatsoever were snippets of news--reluctant coverage, one can almost feel--about government efforts to boost food production and avert a possible national food shortage in our immediate future.

In a struggle between food and tsismis, it is clear which one enjoys the distinct advantage, one unhappily supported, even fueled, by media. Is it already carved into the national soul and ingrained in our national mind--this preference for make-believe over reality, for showbiz over economics, for form over substance?

Maybe this explains why, even on the big screen, when we play out our fantasies, the cinematic creations that draw the crowds and bring in the money are not necessarily the ones that win the awards. But that, surely, is a subject worthy of another editorial.

For now, let us point out the intense activity going on in the area of agricultural development and food production. Late such intensity may be, after our countrymen had already spent a considerable part of last year lining up for imported rice or forking out more money than they should really be paying for every dining table's staple food.

It may be that people in government have finally realized that, other than merely being an occasion for changing the personalities at the helm of the country's food-supply chain, the repetition of a similar situation in the very near future may well lead to collapse of popular support.

The food-supply question is therefore being given the kind and amount of attention it has never gotten before. And about time, too. The Department of Budget and Management is releasing funds to finance increased irrigation and water impounding. Support projects like multi-drying and farm-to-market infrastructure will be receiving separate allocations. Food-producing regions hit hard by last year's series of killer typhoons will be rehabilitated. Thankfully, both government and private agencies dedicated to research and development in agriculture and agribusiness are also ready to contribute their efforts toward securing adequate food supply for the country.

We hope these efforts--which, by the way, still fall short of a comprehensive handle on the whole issue--at least point to one direction: that government is finally weaning itself, however slowly, from the idea of importation as the inevitable cure-all to our food problems. Those who have been following the global food picture know that in the next millennium, food will not only be in short supply on a worldwide basis, it will also be expensive.

Only food self-sufficiency will help us escape the specter of hunger and disorder in the future.

-- NBT

Women's work

As opinion editor of The Evening Paper from 1995-96, I also wrote a twice-weekly nameless column. Nameless because, in the late Nonoy Marcelo's creative template for the editorial pages (his special favor for me, a townmate, high-schoolmate, and family friend), the editorial columns were not going to carry column titles, only the names of those who write them and the titles of their postings.

As I had just moved then from editing a 3-edition, 120+-page global trade magazine, most of my columns dealt with economic development. But I had an expansive view of development, embracing both hard and soft issues.

Personally, I never equated development with gender. To me, the disadvantaged need the benefits of enlightened development, whether they be men or women. The feminist movement, at peak strength when I went in 1971 to the United States as an exchange visitor of the Department of State and the American Women in Radio & Television, attempted to enlist my appearance at some of their campaign events. I was, however, more interested then--aside from my work in the field that qualified me to be there--in the US civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the future of political dissent, the last perhaps understandably, as many times I was asked by Fil-Ams how I could still want to come back to the Philippines, given the regime prevalent in the country at the time.

However, it was also to recognize a valid economic companion issue that I wrote this gender piece more than two decades later.

____________________

Editorial Page column, The Evening Paper
Issue of 17 August 1995

On Tuesday, I mentioned how this week had me so focused on significant international news about women that, much as I always swore by my personal stand that development and trade were issues best freed from the clutches of gender hysteria, I felt I had to touch on the new World Bank micro-lending package for the poorest of the poor, and the connected experiences of five empowered women--four from Jordan, one from India.

Today, let me deal with two major reports that will soon enough fill up newspaper space and broadcast airtime, especially as the world warms up for next month's Fourth World Conference on Women, to be held in China.

The first, the Human Development Report commissioned by the United Nations Development Program, went through a particularly caustic exercise: it placed a price on the largely "unpaid, unrecognized, and undervalued" work performed by women, both at home and in the community, in 31 countries of the world. The 31 countries were picked to provide a credible cross-section of the world's industrial, developing, and transition economies.

Its conclusion should put women through an emotional wringer. The study revealed the price of women's "unpaid" work during one year in 31 countries: $11 trillion!

To appreciate this figure, place it against the background of other statistics. The annual global economic output has been estimated at roughly $23 trillion. The combined GNPs of the world's three largest economies--the United States ($6.3 trillion), Japan ($3.7 trillion), and Germany ($1.8 trillion)--total $11.8 trillion.

In fact, according to the UNDP report, women work longer hours than men in nearly every country in the world. Most of that work, unfortunately, is unpaid--household, food production (especially in rural Africa), nursing and caregiving.

If we can only translate one-half of women's efforts and energies devoted--sometimes from force of pitiful circumstances--to such "unpaid, unrecognized, and undervalued" work to actual paid, recognized, valued, and economically productive labor, and then get the world's men to do the other unpaid half, imagine how much wealthier all families will be!

According to the report, South Korean men spend about 44 percent of their time on unpaid work. And look how vibrant the South Korean economy is today!

Simplistic? Well, then, turn to another landmark report, one prepared by the International Food Policy Research Institute, a Washington-based agricultural research group. "Women: The Key to Food Security," which strikes at a very topical concern, especially for the Philippines, concludes that gender equity in the countryside will be critical in meeting the food needs of the rapidly growing populations of developing countries.

The report strongly advocates reforms in these countries on a variety of fronts--education, training, land ownership. "If women were given the same resources as men, developing countries would see significant increases in agricultural productivity," Agnes Quisumbing, IFPRI fellow and lead author of the report, said.

Working on a flood of data from 15 developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the report detailed agricultural areas where women farmers have always had less compared to the men: agricultural extension programs, machinery that is often also inappropriate for women's needs, research data, access to agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and technologies, and qualifications for obtaining credit.

Yet, women's strengths in the countryside--their indigenous knowledge about seeds and growing systems, their openness to environmentally sustainable agricultural practices, their hope and often irrepressible enthusiasm, their eternal willingness to learn (these last two are my own additions)--are undeniable.

Sometimes, all it needs is a force to bond women together toward maximum accomplishment, whether in the countryside or the urban community. Blunting the edges of "unpaid, unrecognized, and undervalued" women's anger was precisely the triumph of the women whose stories, as recounted in my Tuesday column, began with a micro-lending truth: that women are often better at paying their loans than men!

-- NBT

Whatever happened to ex-China emerging areas?

2011: Notice that as early as 1995, Europe's northernmost powers were already eyeing the world's arctic jewels with much lust.

____________________

Last week, APEC heads of state met for three days in Vietnam, an annual summit more honored for ceremonial significance than for real accomplishments. As business editor of The Evening Paper in 1996, when the APEC summit was held in Subic, I experienced firsthand the modus vivendi resorted to by participating governments and saw up close the compromises struck long before the summits are held.

I doubt that the accommodations have stopped, and I do not believe the tradeoffs ever get called in. Every year, the big problems remain and only the small items get discussed, checked, or shelved.

If we revisit an APEC scenario in 1995, as mapped out in my column below, we will realize that only one emerging growth area has really taken off with amazing speed--the Middle East. And even then, that takeoff is limited to specific countries. There's another tradeoff, I suspect.

____________________

Editorial Page column, The Evening Paper
Issue of 14 November 1995

Even as the Asia-Pacific Economic Forum meets in Osaka this month to push its free-trade agenda, other regions and subregions in various parts of the world are looking into their development needs and actively pursuing them with the urgency of those who feel there may no longer be a tomorrow for their people.

In the Philippines alone, two growth regions well outside the metro areas have surfaced. A southern triangle covering Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, called the East Asean Growth Area (EAGA), has the advantage over a still loosely conceptualized northern subregion. At meetings among government and private-sector representatives, EAGA is steadily being pushed through joint-venture agreements among local businessmen. Since the formal organization of the regional group 18 months ago, agreements have reached an impressive total of 53.

Asean countries, however, do not have a monopoly on subregional initiatives. The newest, and perhaps most attractive to international investors, may be the proposed six-country Mekong River development plan. Covering one of the most fertile areas in Asia and running from China's Yunnan province to the south of Vietnam, the Mekong River plan involves opening the virgin area to global trading, with realistic exchange rates, low inflation, and budgetary discipline. The objective is, of course, to bring in the foreign capital the subregion needs.

Joining forces in the project are the governments of Thailand, China, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, and Vietnam. Representatives of Burma, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia zeroed in on their transport, telecommunications, and power needs in the Mekong area, seeking investments from both private and public sectors in Asia for their development. Burma's Economic Planning Minister David Abel defined the subregion's most urgent need at present as one of developing the "existing infrastructure facilities" of the six countries.

At an Asian Development Bank-sponsored conference of subregional representatives and potential investors held in Manila, ADB officials admitted that many of the projects may not seem financially attractive, despite potentially high economic rates of return, since most of the countries involved in the subregional grouping are only now starting to open up their economies. Environmental policies of the six governments involved will need to be improved, according to ADB Vice Chairman Bong Suh Lee. The Bank, though, has committed itself to developing and taking part in a range of financing mechanisms that could help channel funds to the Mekong development project.

******

Compared to the Mekong River Area, the Middle East and North Africa hardly appear undeveloped. Yet, seven countries stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf are proposing vast economic projects, requiring at least $40 billion, to redirect the region from war to development. Some of these countries, oddly enough, are also considered some of the region's richest occupants.

Leading the Middle East bandwagon is Israel, which presented a $25-billion package at a three-day summit early this month. The summit is actually already a follow-up to a more political gathering held last year in Casablanca, where Arabs and Israelis mingled for the first time before the political crisis caused by the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The Palestinians have proposed $6 billion worth of projects that include a steel rod factory and a $1.5-billion system that will bring water from the West Bank to replace the increasingly saline water supply of the Gaza Strip.

Other projects in the priority list of the seven countries--Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Bahrain, and Qatar--include grand development schemes such as a canal to carry Red Sea water to replenish the Dead Sea, natural gas from Qatar for Israel, and a Palestinian plan to turn the violence-plagued Gaza into the Riviera of the eastern Mediterranean.

However, the governments that did not send representatives to the summit in Amman, Jordan, were as notable as those who did. Syria and Lebanon boycotted because of the lack of progress in their negotiations with Israel. Hardliners Libya, Iraq, and Iran were not present for obvious reasons.

Perhaps the most optimistic comments during the summit came from the United States delegation. "This is a step-by-step process. It is not to happen overnight. (But) it is something that could not have happened a few short years ago," said US Commerce Secretary Ron Brown.

In fact, the ghost of the region's political reality was perhaps the summit's most pervasive presence. With Israel still to sign peace agreements with all its Arab foes, sales pitches may be plentiful and the region may be attractive, but investors are definitely wary.

One US banker openly commented that he heard nothing during the summit that would differentiate the Middle East from Southeast Asia as a market. IMF statistics show that among the world's emerging markets, the Middle East attracts only one-third of one percent of world foreign investment.

The reasons given by the 1,000 or so businessmen and future investors who attended the summit comprise an emerging market's virtual instruction manual: provide adequate economic data and information on companies; break down the resistance among local businessmen to change and Western market standards; build a strong, independent stock-exchange regulatory body to protect the interests of investors; privatize state enterprises and open up family-owned businesses; and cure Arab-Arab rivalry, especially over the issue of a Middle East development bank, that transcends Arab-Israeli enmity.

The summit's final communiqué struck a cautious note: "The summit recognized that the circle of peace needs to be widened."

This can only mean that the Middle East as a development and investment region still has a long way to travel before fruition.

******

But then, come to think of it, an even longer route awaits what may now only be a gleam in the eye of Russian and Nordic leaders: arctic development.

Last month, foreign ministers from the two regions met to discuss the common effort to clean up the environment and develop the Barents Sea area in the European Arctic. Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev promised his country would speed up the removal of nuclear wastes on the Kola peninsula bordering Norway in the Arctic and simultaneously start work to improve regional infrastructure.

When Russia was still part of the Soviet Union, its nuclear waste was stored on the Kola peninsula, home to the former communist superpower's submarine-based nuclear-missile arsenals. Only after the nuclear waste is cleaned up can the Barents region even dream of attracting massive development capital for the ambitious projects it has on its drawing boards: harbor improvement, ship building, energy, banking, and telecommunications.

-- NBT

The time to work together is now

On 8 March 1995, as editorial page editor of The Evening Paper, I wrote a series of editorials on the case of Flor Contemplacion, the Filipina OFW sentenced to death in Singapore for killing a fellow OFW, Delia Maga. This is one of those editorials. The sentence had been carried out by then, and the nation was clearly in mourning.

Hundreds of pages of editorial copy and scores of broadcast hours were spent on the issue of OFWs, provoked by the Flor Contemplacion case. More than a decade after, OFWs continue to die in many parts of the world.

____________________

Editorial, The Evening Paper
Issue of 20 March 1995

Flor Contemplacion came home over the weekend--in a box. She could not have imagined it would ever come to that. When she left the Philippines for Singapore, it must have been, without a doubt, in anticipation of a better life for her children. Nobody could have foreseen that life excluding her.

But such is now fait accompli. And despite the admirable outpouring of public outrage, of national indignation, even of threats from violence-prone organizations, it is no longer Flor Contemplacion that we must think of now.

Rather, it is all the living Flors in all the other countries of the world, bound by contracts to lives of forced servitude to foreigners or by court sentences to years of imprisonment under foreign jailers.

Last week, in an earlier piece on this page, we talked about the need to help Flor's family triumph over the economic pressures that caused her to decide to work as a domestic helper overseas. And they must do so with self-reliance, hard work, pride, and dignity.

On Friday afternoon, as Flor's body was prepared for its flight home, we prayed for her soul, and for ours, too. We asked questions about the support systems in place in our embassies abroad to find out their weaknesses.

This week, let us set out on the path to ideas and proposals to help our OFWs abroad. Let these ideas and proposals be workable ones with very real chances of succeeding. Infuse them with adequate controls and mechanisms to optimize efficiency at the least cost and, given our penchant for bloated bureaucracies, with very lean staffing.

Then, write and explain them to us. We will devote a special section within our editorial pages for the exchange of good, workable ideas. And we will refer them to people and agencies that can make them happen. The bottom line now is national unity and cooperation. Where one part of the body politic or government machinery is weak, all citizens must help, augment, support.

The time for criticism, like the time for weeping, is over. The time to unite, help each other, and work together is now. Politicking while our countrymen abroad die is divisive and counter-productive. Leaving everything to government is contrary to the principle of people empowerment: It is Singapore's way, not ours.

Unless we put our collective heads together as a nation, Filipino OCWs--especially domestic helpers, entertainers, and laborers--may remain the world's most abused workforce. It is not in our national or individual interests to let this situation continue.

-- NBT

The question of power

Rumors of future power shortages reminiscent of those that bedeviled the economy and the country in the late 1980s and early 1990s are floating around again, enough to worry those who understand that unless the economy moves, the country will not. And, of course, unless there is power--steady, adequate, present, and, may we insist, cheap power--the economy will not move.

As before, our power infrastructure will need to be revisited, upgraded. Within this year alone, the cost of fossil fuels rose alarmingly. Biofuels, while plentiful in research, are untested in reality. We don't even have laws in place yet to encourage the development of biofuels.

Once again, a typically Filipino shortcoming is at the very heart of the matter: lack of foresight. When will Filipinos ever learn that to live one's life as one prefers is a right, but to run a government and a country is a responsibility?

_______________

Editorial, The Evening Paper
Issue of 3 April 1995

The National Power Corporation promises brownout-free summer months for all of us, with maximum reserves of 600 megawatts of electricity available in two weeks, enough to sustain the expected peak demand of 3,700 megawatts in the middle of April. However, Luzon-based power consumers should be ready for "short-duration outages of six to eight minutes a day" this month.

The statement was in response to an earlier statement by Raul Concepcion, chairman of the Multisectoral Task Force on Power Scheduling, raising the possibility of three- to four-hour daily brownouts this month. The NPC said Concepcion himself admitted being misquoted, as what he said was "a total of three to four hours for the whole month of April."

Of course, nobody would even have thought of brownouts again had certain parts of Metro Manila not been hit by them early last week. The NPC, washing its hands of responsibility for the recent outages, said these occurred within the Meralco franchise area.

Needed now, perhaps, is a definitive, joint, true statement from Malacañang, the NPC, Concepcion, and Meralco on the real power situation, both in the whole country and in the Meralco franchise areas. Only a statement such as this can reassure us now or prepare us for the worst.

In the absence of such a statement, the can of worms already opened by the black comedy of sporadic brownouts last week and a "misquoted" power-scheduling chairman will probably spread out even more frustrating and slimy rumors.

And that is only for the short term. For the long term, we tend to agree with Speaker Jose de Venecia who, whatever his usual shortcomings, speaks sense as far as the Philippine power situation is concerned. The Speaker wants a thorough review of the power situation--not just a review of power rates--to cover the crucial question of adequacy of power supply.

There is unquestioned logic in the proposal. For a country aspiring to NIChood, whether by year 2000 or after, strategic planning with regard to power requirements for the future should already be on today's drawing boards. As long as sizable areas of the country remain chained to the flickering, dim lights of candles and gas lamps, we cannot be considered a serious participant in the race for growth and development.

De Venecia pointed out that 15,000 barangays in the country, plus some island provinces, still do not have electricity. Now, the electrification of those areas should have been in yesterday's drawing boards. Their sorry situation keeps these areas bound to the dark ages. Their debilitating effects deprive the residents of the benefits of progress, and our national coffers, of the financial share in the benefits that progress can bring to these localities.

The complete electrification of the country is surely a national goal worth pursuing, even if you ask the most committed proponents of sustainable development. The only disagreements may be in the method of electrification to be pursued and the areas that may be ecologically endangered.

And while a comprehensive power-adequacy situation is under review, it may be time to resolve the future of the white elephant nobody wants to touch: the mothballed 600-megawatt Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP). In daily loan interests alone, we pay P7.8 million for the hideous monster. We cannot keep on paying for the folly of one man without trying to make it pay off for us.

Isn't it time to display decisive and unwavering political will about a monster that, even if it crumbles to a heap on the ground, still will not allow us to stop feeding it--and turn it around to serve us instead? We do not want a nuclear plant? Fine. We do not want a coal-fired plant? Fine.

So, can we not put the collective heads of our best and most respectable local scientists, energy experts, and environmentalists, in government and out of it, organize them into a group that will propose how best to convert the BNPP? Oil-fired, natural gas-fed, whatever. Get a national consensus, complete with studies on the most practical way to effect the conversion.

But making a decision to convert the mothballed plant and actually seeing to its conversion into a fully performing asset is a project that must be done now--not in the foreseeable future--but now. It is one achievement the Ramos administration can be proud of, as long as it is done without any taint of politics, in transparent and open consultation with the people, and successfully.

It will be a turnaround worth crowing about for the Philippines, and one that can help propel us into the NIChood for which we aspire.

-- NBT

In the chancy game of tourism

"Crunch Time," The Evening Paper
Issue of 11 September 1996

The news was delivered to me with great enthusiasm, believing I would react as expected of me: happily, of course. A firm of which a relation is an officer, I was told, had bagged a contract to develop a resort subdivision, one with a golf course to be designed by another US golfing has-been.

I can understand the messenger's expectations. It had, after all, been a long and hard climb for the firm in a field that had earlier been staked out, and successfully so, by businessmen replete with money, bank and local government contacts, and guts. This new contract would, in a sense, be a breakthrough for the firm.

But the messenger could not understand my reaction: dismay (another golf course? another resort subdivision?) and distaste (all that natural, beautiful creation bulldozed into an artificial game plot--and nothing can be more artificial than a designer golf course!).

When will Filipinos ever learn that even the best of things can reach a point of utter saturation and that a surfeit of overexploitation and overcommercialization, especially of land, can only lead to decline and decay?

In the '70s and '80s, we sold our beaches, our sun, sand, and sea. In the late '80s and '90s, what are we selling? Golf courses?

******

In the tourism industry, nobody has learned the hardest lessons--and lived to tell the tale--than the Africans.

They pioneered the sun-and-safari brand of tourism, and what stares many of them in the face today is a catastrophe. Hordes of tourists still go to the more recently developed game reserves in Africa, but their numbers dwindle from year to year.

The lesson is that tourists will beg off from too much of a good thing, especially if that thing has stopped being good. Who wants to go driving through miles of bushland for one lonely lion lying in the heat, uncaring and contemptuous of what man has wrought in his natural habitat?

This is why Benjamin Mkapa, president of Tanzania, has given very precise instructions and very strict orders about any more tourist resorts that will go up in his country. That Tanzania has escaped the fate of neighbors like Kenya is an accident of history and politics. But Mkapa is wise enough to realize that his country can profit from the accident and come out richer and more fortunate than his African neighbors ever will be.

The need, though, is for utmost discipline in developing Tanzania. Mkapa's reply: "environmentally friendly" resorts.

Ecotourism has become both a global battlecry and a potential dollar-earner for many governments in Latin America and Africa. In 1995, according to the records of the Tanzania Tourist Board, 293,834 foreigners visited and spent $258 million during their stay in the African country. This year, the board expects tourist arrivals to reach 326,000 and bring in revenues of $372 million.

But the government has also put a cap on tourists: no more than 500,000 visitors a year, the board decrees.

On resort developers, the government is even stricter, as a major investor in East Africa's tourism industry and one of the world's richest men, the Aga Khan, himself found out. One of the first resort developers in Tanzania, sinking $32.5 million in three resorts, he learned to deal with Mkapa's government and its environmentally friendly rules. The experience, as related by Hrvoje Hranjski of the Associated Press, was a complex one.

All the plans and project studies for each one of the Aga Khan's resorts in Tanzania had to go through four environmental impact assessments before they were approved.

One of the resorts is perched on the rim of the Ngorongoro crater, an extinct volcano that is home to lions, giraffes, flamingos, and Cape buffalos. The original site for this resort's lodge--a stone building covered with vines--had to be moved two meters so a fig tree would not be felled.

Bathtubs, a swimming pool, and a water slide--all in the original plans--were dropped when the indigenous Masai tribe in the area protested against the pumping of water from a nearby spring. Guests to the resort will now have to make do with showers fed by a system that collects rainwater from the rooftop. For hot water, solar panels do the work. A diesel generator, the only source of electricity in the area, is located inside a shed covered with two layers of skin, reducing output of both noise and fumes.

The hotel in the Aga Khan's second resort, located in an area heavy with animal traffic, had to be designed to look like Masai huts, which are not fenced. Guests have only two options when lions stroll by: stay inside the locked huts, or pray for invisibility.

Mkapa has set three narrow paths for Tanzania's ecotourism industry: to keep impact on environment and local culture minimal, to keep to the policies of conservation and preservation, and to keep the country unspoiled.

There is business acumen in Mkapa's decision, not cause-oriented naivete. Tourists now want new and unspoiled destinations, and the country has the advantage of avoiding the costly mistakes of others.

And if the government of Tanzania keeps to all it has pledged to do, it will still be offering natural resorts when all other game preserves in Africa would have died from lack of animals and lack of tourists.

******

Compare that with the surfeit of beaches and golf courses in the Philippines--of which by the way we enjoy no monopoly--and the rainforests in Asia and Latin America that are being sold for logs, and it is easy to see who will survive and die in the chancy game of global tourism.

-- NBT

Agriculture, beyond politics

In 1996, the APEC summit of leaders was held in Subic. As in Osaka the year before, agriculture became an issue to palm off to study committees, not to finally resolve.

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"Crunch Time," The Evening Paper

Issue of 17 July 1996

Many APEC officials, including Filipinos in the organizing committees of the regional trade forum, have publicly shrugged off the agriculture issue--the most contentious issue and the one that host Japan at last year's Osaka summit tried to skim--as "a political issue." I have been told by at least one local APEC official that the issue will surely be raised again at Subic in November, but that the World Trade Organization has already ruled on it.

I presume the policy pronouncement can only mean that the lines on agriculture have long been drawn, and all the emotion that is being squeezed from the issue will not succeed in twisting the world's straight and narrow path.

The Philippines, after all, is already toeing the line.

******

But in Europe, laws and policies are not making the farmers' plight any easier on bureaucrats and politicians who see only too clearly the heartache that global trade can bring on even the most dedicated farmers.

Expenditures for agriculture, mainly in the form of subsidies to protect the incomes of European farmers from price fluctuations, already eat up half of the European Union's $111-billion budget. In effect, it is now the most expensive item on the EU budget.

How long will it remain so? Unless a miracle happens, perhaps forever. Global trade is going to flood all markets with cheap food products from everywhere else, depressing all food prices. Even if farmers all over the world go on a productivity binge, the consequences can be tragic. You may outproduce every other farmer, but will your market be there?

Review and reform of the Common Agricultural Program are a priority on the EU agenda. The European Commission would like nothing more than to altogether cross out farm subsidies from its agricultural support program.

But that is a dream that will require massive structural corrections. Governments will have to do what they have ordinarily surrendered, and happily so, to the wisdom of market forces. Who could have foreseen that before most of the world's farmers could get themselves ready, world markets would require them to fight tooth and nail for survival?

The real world of agriculture will have to go through its crucifixion before it can even dream of the ideal benefits of global farm trade. All the way down the line, farm-sector restructuring wll have to be undertaken--and fast. Sizes of farms will have to be assessed on the bases of efficiency and economy of scale. What products shall be grown, and where shall they be most cost-effective to grow?

The foundations of agro-industry will have to be laid where there were none before. Marketing systems will have to be reviewed and dismantled where they are not economical and functioning. Access to credit will have to be provided and farmers encouraged to take advantage of it.

A whole new way of thinking and operating--one that gives priority to preparing finished products for the market rather than simply supplying raw materials--will have to be fostered among farmers, never an easy job to do with people whose love is for the land, not for business or industry.

But all the above are not meant to prove the process impossible: only that it will take time, money, and hard work for everybody, governments and farmers alike.

******

Somebody like Eugeniusz Hamrol from, of all countries, Poland, proves it can be done. This is one farmer from a former communist country who drives a BMW, carries a mobile phone, wears a photographer's vest, manages a 71-hectare farm, and is not so much farmer as businessman.

His farm is equipped with a US-manufactured food supply system, a Dutch-built heating plant, ventilation and water systems, all computer-run. He is on a continuous educational binge, familiarizing himself with any subject even remotely connected to farming: breeding, mechanics, veterinary medicine, economics, marketing, feeding.

Hamrol not only raises chickens, he also grows his own grain for chicken feed and slaughters his chickens. He does not just supply raw, live chickens. If he did, he would not survive in the market.

His farm is the right size, and it is efficient, growing, self-sufficient. Global trade or not, he is the kind of farmer who is not happy being just a farmer. Already, he is talking about services. It is the future, he told Associated Press writer Jeffrey Ulbrich. He thinks it is what will provide jobs, including jobs for farmers whose farms are on the short list for extinction--farmers with too-small, inefficient, expensive operations.

Or those who don't know how to make their farms efficient, self-sufficient, and productive.

-- NBT

A trio of life's big stories

When I was opinion editor of a short-lived afternoon daily in the Philippines, one of the tasks I enjoyed doing every day was going over wire stories from all over the world. Some of the articles, especially geopolitical analyses, impacted hugely on newspapers the next day.

But the stories I enjoyed most were the small stories--the human-interest ones--usually from places in the world the names of which may be unfamiliar to ordinary readers. Such stories comprise a rich and unending source of comment and material for an editor/columnist like me, who admits to having favorite issues. Mine remain, to this day, sustainable livelihood, environmental protection and ecotourism, poverty reduction, and human development.

To me, the real heroes of our time are those who strive despite the odds, who work hard whether there is government help or none, never giving up their right to a better life for themselves and their children. The economic growth of any country rests on the shoulders of people who build, not on the politicians who only care about power and who dispenses it.

_______________

Editorial, The Evening Paper

Issue of 20 April 1995

On particular days, but not often, we get a memorable haul of human-interest stories--all in one day--from different places in the world. They may be heartwarming, gut-wrenching, or mind-blowing. But whatever their specific quality, such stories manage to spring up from the reams of copy on newspaper desks, virtually shouting for some reaction from the rest of the world.

Yesterday was one such day, when in the span of one afternoon, our eyes landed on three particularly moving human-interest stories.

One of them, you will read in the opposite page. It is a story about blacks and whites in South Africa, finally confronting their physical togetherness in a nation-state that had kept them, under artificial laws and customs, divided for half a century.

Coming face to face with their black alter egos and how they live has been an eye-opener for the whites of South Africa, earlier cocooned from reality by a minority government that had made a particular success of an inhuman policy--until the blacks themselves, collectively, burst the bubble of apartheid.

The story of blacks and whites learning to live side by side in Hout Bay, South Africa, is a continuing story, one we hope will prove the universality and primacy of human thought and aspirations despite differences in race, religion, and roots.

The second story, from Sihanoukville, is a sad and painful one, doubtless familiar to many Filipinos. The report traces the minor economic boom that has come to this port town of Cambodia, and the growth and progress it brings with it: thriving businesses, foreign investments, increased earnings.

And the evils, too: seaside clubs, karaoke bars.

One particularly gut-wrenching development: child prostitution. Impoverished families, attracted by the money their teenage "virgins" can make in the town's new bars and clubs, sell them to bar owners, who then take their 40-percent cut from the girls' nightly earnings.

One Cambodian human-rights group, Vigilance, believes all it needs to lick the problem in Sihanoukville is protective legislation. "We will be able to work out this problem when we've got the law," the vice president of Vigilance said.

As many similar groups everywhere know, this is too naive an assessment of the problem. Indeed, the lack of protective legislation is only one part of the problem. Even when there is protective legislation, the problem will continue as long as the whole system encourages even just one impoverished parent to trade his or her teenage offspring for the goods that money can buy. In the Philippines, we know this only too well.

The third human-interest story that caught our eye yesterday is our favorite. Datelined Algirchar in Bangladesh, it is a heartwarming story of a simple invention that may as well have originated from anywhere in Asia's, including the Philippines's, endangered ricelands.

It tells of how one simple contraption changed the prospects for 500,000 Bangladeshi farmers long deprived of adequate irrigation for their crops. The contraption, a foot-powered treadle pump, makes use of very ordinary materials: metal cylinders, bamboo levers, plastic pipes. It is the invention of one Narendra Nath Deb, a farmer himself, who once could not afford to buy water, usually from the power pumps of wealthy landowners, with which to irrigate his fields during the dry months.

Although Deb holds no patent, he now manufactures his modified pump for the US development agency that specializes in marketing "simple devices that can make a big difference in the Third World." The agency's goal is to equip all of Bangladesh's 6 million farmers with the pump, thus raising the country's annual agricultural output to approximately $2.1 billion. And yes, Deb has become moderately wealthy and has ceased to farm.

A success story from Bangladesh. Can we hear of some local ones now?

-- NBT

Trade in the real world

Since this column was written over a decade ago, many other issues have entrapped countries all over the world. Terrorism was the Bush-Blair governments' main concern. Trade took a back seat to political maneuverings, not only in the United States but also in Latin American countries, some of which are--until today, as in Nicaragua--electing leaders hostile, not to global trade (we hope!), but to global dominance by Washington.

____________________

Editorial Page column, The Evening Paper

Issue of 1 August 1995

Trade is not a one-way street, let me make it clear, nor should local exporters want it that way. To demand that the poor, developing nations of the world must be given preferential treatment in developed markets over everybody else is to live in an ideal world.

In the real world, competition is the engine of trade. And competitors do not always play fair, or the word "protectionism" would never have come about. While all players may demand level playing fields and swear their allegiance to borderless economies till kingdom come, trying to put one over others is the culture of the trade game.

Each player is in the game, if not to win big, then at least to come home with a share of the winnings. Which is still better than sulking and staying home because one is not in shape to compete. As facile expressions go--no pain, no gain; no guts, no glory.

When rich nations talk about countries like the Philippines as "emerging markets," do not think the phrase means they will only buy from us. More accurately, they will sell to us.

United States Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, at a two-day conference of 500 American business executives last week at Georgetown University, did not soften the definition any when he listed 18 countries as "big emerging markets ... These are the markets of tomorrow," Brown said.

"The opportunities are incredible. Our conservative estimates suggest that between 1990 and 2010, exports to the 10 biggest emerging markets will grow perhaps a trillion dollars, perhaps more if we focus on them intensely."

Brown's words ring the bell of truth, which every country in the big list should know. The United States sees all markets, before anything else, as needing to buy a lot of what US businesses can produce over the next decade.

Only afterwards will the Americans agree that we can sell to the US market a lot of what we ourselves produce. After all, it is also true that the emerging economies, however large and promising, cannot buy US products unless they have money. Thus, the complex workings of loans, aid, and investments.

Within that vicious relationship is the virtuous cycle of global trade. The required virtues are, however, extremely challenging: industry, efficiency, creativity, innovation, competitiveness, discipline (especially among local consumers), and trade acumen. Can the Philippines join the game?

By the way, the countries making up the 18 in the US list of "big emerging markets" are Argentina, Brazil, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India, Mexico, Poland, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, and the seven member-countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

******

Even as the United States has enshrined a list of priority markets, it is also moving fast within its host hemisphere. A hemispheric free trade area by 2005 is the US goal in the Americas. The goal was adopted by presidents and prime ministers of countries located in the hemisphere--from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego on the tip of South America--at a December 1994 meeting in Miami.

The nitty-gritty of the master plan, bold but still vague, for open markets all throughout the Americas was the subject of an earlier meeting in Denver of the commerce and trade chiefs from all 34 countries. The plan will include tying up bilateral as well as regional trade agreements, particularly NAFTA and Mercosur, into one giant accord covering a market of roughly 700 million consumers.

The task is not an easy one, given the frenzy in the US Congress over the Mexican experience and existing bilateral-trade problems between hemisphere countries, such as the Brazil-Argentina row over car-import quotas. Thus, the 10-year timetable for realizing the hemisphere-wide agreement.

What is more telling, though, is a steadily growing sentiment among Latin American countries. Brazil, the region's largest economy, has bolstered the sentiment into policy. Rejecting any uni-directional agreements, Brazil's president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, has said: "We want no closed doors."

Chile is ready to adopt the Brazilian creed. Latin America's only economy with an investment-grade credit rating, Chile has sent its trade negotiators to all directions, ready to lock in any markets they can pick up along the country's route to export prominence. Chile is already a member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), is due to join South America's Mercosur bloc, is talking to the European Union for a trade pact, and is negotiating with the United States, Canada, and Mexico for membership in NAFTA.

Such aggressiveness grew out of versatility. Chile feels it can dictate its own terms for entry into NAFTA because it refused to put all its eggs into one basket.

******

An agreement to open up financial services worldwide, experimentally to cover the next three years, has been brokered by the World Trade Organization, with only the United States opting out of a deal that will allow banks, insurance companies, and securities firms to operate globally.

"The harsh truth is that the United States currently has the worst school-to-work system in the industrialized world," according to a report that compared the record of American schools against those of European schools in preparing their students for successful integration into the workforce.

Meanwhile, Beijing is into an interesting experiment to transform China's credit cooperatives into commercial banks.

Let's talk about all these next time.

-- NBT

Whence empowerment?

"Crunch Time," The Evening Paper

Issue of 6 March 1996

Nothing drives me up the wall more than a statement, just like the one tossed during a television show sometime ago, on the supposed popular disenchantment with the consequences of the revolution that never was (a revolution)--EDSA 1986.

The loud accusation: Highly touted democratic administrations after EDSA have failed to bring about real economic empowerment for the Filipino people.

But whence comes economic empowerment?

******

Winters in Kashmir are replete with endless, sloping Himalayan valleys filled with fragrant flowers of purple saffron. In the early mornings, as the sun rises and the mist clears, saffron growers come out to pluck the flowers, oblivious to the occasional gunfire of a distant revolt.

In houses all over the valley, the womenfolk separate the petals from the flowers. At the end of the day, they would have produced about one kilogram of saffron petals from 40 kilograms of flowers.

Powdered saffron has a variety of uses--as a condiment in cooking, a fragrance in perfumes and special Kashmiri tea, and for making herbal medicines. At Hindu temples, the yellow stain from the petal is rubbed on the foreheads of the faithful. As an export product, saffron reaches as far as the Middle East and Britain and is popular among overseas Asian populations.

Saffron farmer Ghulam Mohamed Yathoo's earnings amount to some 50,000 rupees ($1,450) a year. He sells the saffron petals for 150-200 rupees ($5.70) per 12 grams. Another saffron farmer, Mohamed Shafeeq, said the season, which begins around the end of October, only lasts about two months. "We do other jobs during the off-season," he told Reuters correspondent Feizal Samath.

******

Farm life in the yellow hills of Shaanxi, in the poor, north-central area of China, has changed only in one aspect: the farms are increasingly being run by women.

All over China, millions of men have traveled away from their farm plots to find work in mines, factories, and special economic zones. It is the women who stay to work out the long-term leases on their state-owned fields.

The work for these women is backbreaking. Most farming in China waits to be mechanized, electricity has yet to replace kerosene lamps, and irrigation is still by buckets of water hauled on shoulder poles. But the local women, helped by government training programs, are improving on the old ways and making more money, according to a report by Renee Schoof of the Associated Press.

Xie Xiufen, a 38-year-old teacher and women's federation leader in Baimao village, started a new local industry by planting apples. After getting a fat check for her first harvest, she spent her evenings teaching other village women to read pesticide instructions and sales receipts. The women's federation provided training in apple growing.

Before her first apple harvest, Xie, her husband who works in the local government unit, and their two sons had just enough to eat. Today, they have more than 20,000 yuan ($2,400) in savings and plan to move to a new house.

A 1995 study by the International Fund for Agricultural Development found that many of China's 450 million rural women took government-sponsored agricultural training courses and now proudly possess two essential properties: their own income--and hope.

******

Whenever I hear migrant wives in Metro Manila declare on public service radio shows that they have no work of their own and their husbands hold only occasional jobs, I cringe.

-- NBT

Robin who?

The subject of this editorial has, since this was written and published, lost much of his swagger, thanks to a short stint behind bars. But he has supposedly turned Muslim and continues his high-profile life in the country, only visiting his wife and children in Australia periodically. (Author's note: He has also, since this intro was written, allegedly taken another wife--another showbiz pretty face.)

That he remains on the scene, hardly showing the kind of talent (like, say, Richard Burton's or Sir Laurence Olivier's) for which we can excuse everything else--well, almost everything else--is a deplorable reflection on the standards of Filipino filmmakers as well as fans.

But then, look at the kind of movie stars who pass for film actors in the Philippines, and the businessmen who pass for producers, and perhaps we should stop even thinking of a better film future for the country.

Yes, the indies may be the scene to watch.

____________________

Editorial, The Evening Paper

Issue of 28 August 1995

A friend cannot understand media's seeming fascination with the continuing mess Robin Padilla is making of his life. He says that giving the spoiled punk front-page treatment in newspapers and headline-news airtime on radio and television sends the wrong signals down the line of young and hero-worshipping Filipinos. Are local media sacrificing their obligation to help shape the values of their audience at the altar of commerce?

There is hardly any doubt that the print and broadcast media have been squeezing every drop of printer's ink that may still flow from a soon-to-dry-up Robin story. But it is also evident that media stories in this case are seeking to ask the right questions and unearth the secret power connections that have precisely allowed this disgusting transgression of the laws of government and society.

The interest in Robin Padilla's story is no longer producing legitimate coverage of the life of a boy who is not worth the space, the time, or the attention. It has become a revealing reportage on our times and our people: on every level of an industry that misguidedly gave its adoration to a paper hero; on opportunistic politicians riding on an image of crudity rather than courage; on law enforcers who, we are now finding out, have been playing a dangerous game of power and patronage.

The revelations about the punk and how he spent his days "eluding" those tasked to look for him tell a story of infinite shame--and we are afraid it may lead all the way to the top echelons of power in the country. The good thing is that we are learning every little thing about the contemptible misalliances that have prospered in the film industry, government, and the military.

Next time another punk comes along, hoping to make laughingstock of all of us, we'll know how to brutally cut him--and his connections--down to size.

-- NBT

Competitiveness

Editorial Page column, The Evening Paper
Issue of 3 August 1995

An exciting experiment is about to take place in China and should be in full force before the end of the year. My interest here is anchored not only on the nature of the experiment but also on its motivation.

The experiment will take credit cooperatives in 35 major Chinese cities, group them into "collective city cooperative banks," and give them the authority to operate as commercial banks. They will be made to adopt standard commercial management and compete head-on with the big commercial banks.

A vice governor of the central People's Bank of China, who presented the country's new Commercial Bank Law, paid tribute to credit cooperatives. He said they have"worked quite well providing loans to collectives, private businesses, and other small ventures that are seen by the major banks as too risky." In their evolution into commercial banks, the credit cooperatives will continue to play the same role: that of servicing small and medium-size companies, which often complain they cannot get credit from China's huge and indifferent state banks. Allowing competition to flourish within a sector is admirable enough. Tasking the cooperatives to service a clientele that often does not get any attention from those in mainstream banking is even more commendable.

Our small and medium-size enterprises also need all the help they can get in terms of additional capital. Most of them already possess the enthusiasm, the technology, the drive. What they need is the added boost of capital. As Taiwan and South Korea have adequately proven, small and medium-size firms, especially those supporting export industries, are indispensable to a globally competitive economy.

This should convince skeptics in our finance sector who, only over two months ago, scathingly rejected the idea of a local Grameen-style bank. Not only the World Bank, it now appears, is convinced about the viability of "banking on the poor."

******

Another huge market goes global. Almost a hundred countries have now committed themselves to an agreement, brokered by the World Trade Organization, opening up their financial services markets for the next three years. What this means, theoretically, is that it is now open market--to a set level in the 95 countries that signed up for the accord--for banks and securities and insurance companies.

Again, for businesses all over the world operating in this market, competitiveness is the prime requirement. The 95 countries that signified agreement with the accord will eventually see "more foreign banks, more foreign securities, and more foreign insurance companies." The WTO claims the result would be increased security for investors and more investment in the developing world.

Between the time the agreement is enforced and the time WTO's vision comes true, however, things could go wrong--and badly. The Philippines is already seeing more foreign banks coming in this year. More foreign securities and foreign insurance companies to follow comprise a threat frightening enough to freeze many a local businessman's blood.

Charges of unfair competition are bound to be brought up again, ad infinitum. That's one way of looking at the new setup. The other way is looking at our local banks, local securities, and local insurance companies moving out, perhaps trailing our monster OFW communities abroad and profiting from the ready-made clientele.

And that's aside from the foreign business that our financial services companies may be able to catch once they establish their presence in thriving markets.

Fear of open markets and liberalized trade is understandable. But the time has come for Filipino businessmen to be proactive, to rise with alacrity to the challenge of global competitiveness. Successful Filipino managers in multinational firms here and abroad have reaped plaudits, or at the very least, learned to keep up with the exacting pace of global business. Most of them find, if they have to work again for local ventures, a slower pace frustrating, at the very least. Areas of production where local businesses are often found wanting, aside from speed, are quality, R&D, technology, and innovation.

It is time all local ventures initiated a thorough study and inventory of their processes, whether they be in manufacturing, agriculture and agri-based industries, or services. The time to reengineer, for all Filipino-owned ventures, is now.

******

"The United States currently has the worst school-to-work system in the industrialized world," said a statement that accompanied the release of a study conducted by the American Federation of Teachers. The federation represents some 875,000 US public-school teachers and other education workers.

The report admits the US has the largest number of university graduates in the world, but it raises concerns about the education given the 75 percent of US students who do not graduate from college. US schools are concentrating too much on preparing youngsters for college and ignoring high school students who will be seeking jobs in business and industry.

"There is no systematic mechanism for moving young people into the workforce," the federation said.

Would the record of Philippine high schools be any better than their American counterparts? Do Philippine schools prepare our children for job competition in a global economy?

-- NBT