MSOpinion Not yet time to rest Cry for the benighted land and its future, with its brains and brawns leaving the Philippines because it’s so hard to love
Days after the President’s second SONA where he pointed to inflation as the biggest headache during his first year in office, then claimed that it was tamed by government actions, the newly-appointed Bangko Sentral governor declared that “it was too soon to declare victory.”
That Central Bank had to be re-capitalized by the government after the financial crisis of the early 1980s highlighted by the assassination of Benigno S. Aquino Jr. which bled our monetary system into a fatal spiral of sky-high interest rates and the inability to settle our foreign debt payments during the last years of martial rule.
On the local scene, El Nino has been preceded by destructive typhoons, especially the last one, Egay, which hit Northern Luzon, one of our major food basket areas. Rice, corn and vegetable crops have been destroyed. This will cascade into other exporting countries, such as Thailand, Vietnam, the United States, Pakistan and Brazil.China with its huge population is expected to bid high for Asia’s rice supply.
And it will be felt most in the urban centers which depend on food from the agricultural regions and consume much more oil for transport and energy requirements. Moreover, the private sector, if it will resort to borrowings, will be crowded out by government borrowings, which are sovereign guaranteed.
There are proposals for tax adjustments, the latest of which is Joey Salceda’s proposed tax increase on luxury products, and he has enumerated quite a few of those products only the very rich can afford to splurge on.His colleagues in Congress and their families, plus contractors most of whom are also politicians or politically connected, so will they shoot themselves in the foot?Sources say that senators get a minimum of P2 billion each, which doubles, even triples, depending on “abilidad.
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