MANILA, Philippines – A close economic adviser of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo warned that the “worst is yet to come” because of the deepening economic and financial meltdown that is buffeting the world.
For this reason, Governor Joey Salceda of Albay province in the Bicol Region urged the government to launch a new plan to stimulate the economy and help cushion the impact of the crisis, particularly for the Filipinos, both here and abroad, who have been retrenched from their jobs.
Salceda, a former top stock market analyst, is acknowledged as one of President Arroyo’s closest economic advisers.
Salceda noted that when the global economic crunch started, the government already succeeded in creating a total of 586,000 new jobs due to the implementation of policies like tax relief, food subsidies and agricultural investments.
Of the total, 54 percent, or 311, 770 of the new jobs were in retail trade, 86,596 in education and 60,720 in agriculture, he said.
However, Salceda pointed out the new jobs created since December 2008 were much lower than the 861,000 new work opportunities that were made available to the Filipinos in October that same year.
He explained this could be the effects of the 2008 policies starting to wear off, or the effects of the global recession that are now being felt since at least 121,570 jobs were already lost in the manufacturing sector.
In this light, the governor urged the government to adopt a “real” economic stimulus package worth at least the equivalent to more than $6 billion to be spent from 2009 to 2011 to fund its conditional cash transfer program.
The program, Salceda pointed out, aims mainly to grant cash allowances to selected poor families for use in the purchase of food and the education of their children.
At the same time, Salceda stressed that the growing unemployment problem is not only due to the worsening global recession which resulted in the retrenchment of Filipinos working in local industries and abroad, such as the US and the Middle East.
Another major contributory factor, Salceda said, is the rapid growth in the number of Filipinos entering the labor market every year.
“Population growth plus global crisis equals a lethal mix,” Salceda emphasized without elaborating.
But apparently, he was referring to the alarm and concern raised by demographers and concerned sectors about the unabated increase in the country’s population which now totals 90 million.
Demographers and lawmakers have urged the government to adopt a national policy to reduce the country’s galloping annual population growth rate of 1.9 percent, considered as one of the highest not only in Asia and the Pacific but in the entire world.
Earlier, officials acknowledged that aside from the workers laid off from their jobs due to the crisis, about 500,000 young Filipinos who are to graduate from college and high school in March would now be joining the already bulging workforce.
Their entry, officials warned, could jack up the country’s unemployment rate by about one percent.
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