Shouldn't we do more for Japan?

Two months after the Japan quake and tsunami, many Japanese towns are still in calamity mode. People are still living in emergency facilities and it looks like it will take much longer for life to take on a more normal look. The devastated villages are still being slowly and carefully cleared as people look for sentimental objects that may be buried in the rubble. Many towns will be rebuilt further away from the shore.

According to the British newspaper The Guardian, it will take three years to deal with the 25 metric tons of debris in Japanese towns devastated by the tsunami. Most of these will have to be scrapped, burnt or recycled. This includes at least 16 towns, 95,000 buildings, 23 railway stations and hundreds of kilometers of roads, railway tracks and sea walls.

The World Bank estimates the cost of the disaster at $235 billion, making it the world’s most expensive. With charity pouring in from overseas, EU diplomats believe Japan – formerly the world’s biggest donor – may become the world’s biggest aid recipient this year. The Japanese government has just passed a budget to deal with the crisis. More than ¥250 billion has been earmarked for clearing the debris alone.

Perhaps, our own government can offer to do more to help Japanese victims recover. When I asked him, Ambassador Manuel Lopez told me we can offer to relocate some Japanese families here. Their farms have been damaged by saltwater from the tsunami, the Ambassador explained. Some of these farmer families whose land can not be farmed for years can certainly use an alternative site. I understand that Mayor Duterte of Davao has already made such an offer. Apparently, Davao has hosted a Japanese community for some time now and this may help ease the transition of the refugees.

Having had Japan as our largest foreign aid donor for decades, gestures of assistance that bring out the best in us as a people would be most appropriate. The hosting proposal will also bring benefits to us in terms of learning new technology and hopefully, we can be infected with the Japanese attitude that transformed a war ravaged nation into the world’s second largest economy until China’s recent ascent. The Philippine Retirement Authority already has some programs along this line and can perhaps just shift a bit to cover a younger demographic.

There could also be some business opportunities in Japan’s reconstruction effort for some of our entrepreneurs. A Bloomberg report says that the quake will spur the biggest boom in home building in Japan in 15 years. According to Bloomberg, this is the view of Sekisui House Ltd. (1928), Japan’s second-largest home builder, as it refocuses its sights on the local Japanese market after expanding overseas in the past years.

 Isami Wada, chairman of the Osaka-based company, told Bloomberg in an interview that housing starts, which dipped below one million units in 2009 and 2010 may rebound as homeowners rebuild after the nation’s strongest temblor. “We had to expand overseas because signs of a slowdown in Japan’s housing demand were alarming,” Wada said in Tokyo. “Unexpectedly, the earthquake struck. I now anticipate annual housing demand to reach the one million-unit level again due to revival efforts and reconstruction demand.”

Sekisui, which expanded into markets including Australia and China in the past three years, is predicting demand will exceed that of 1996, a year after the Great Hanshin Earthquake that hit cities including Kobe, when 1.6 million new homes were built. “This time, the earthquake damaged a much wider area,” said Wada. “The need for revival is greater than the Hanshin earthquake. With so many aftershocks, I expect more home owners will seek to rebuild.”

Prime Minister Naoto Kan has proposed a 4 trillion yen extra budget that is likely to be the first of several packages to rebuild areas devastated by March’s magnitude-9 temblor and tsunami that destroyed and damaged almost 350,000 homes. About 90 percent of Japan’s 30.3 million homes haven’t been assessed for quake resistance, according to Japan’s Statistics Bureau.

I asked Ambassador Lopez about this development and he confirmed that there would indeed be a housing boom as part of the rehabilitation efforts. How Filipino construction companies can participate would depend on their relationships with Japanese companies that would be tapped for the effort.

For sure, Ambassador Lopez said, trained Filipino construction workers will be needed. He said that even now, Filipino welders are in great demand in the Japanese shipyards. Our workers have a good reputation in Japan for their skills and reliability, the Ambassador said, and that’s a good entry point for other construction workers to eventually come in too.

For now, let us see what happens with that offer from Davao to relocate Japanese farmers there. I hear other Philippine towns and cities are also going to make similar offers. The faster things happen, the better for the dislocated Japanese farmers who cannot go back to their farms any time soon. Perhaps we can ease visa requirements for the Japanese victims. This people to people effort may be just the thing we can do for a country that had been our leading ODA donor for many decades now.

Coach

According to The Financial Times, Coach, the American bag and accessories brand, will shift up to half of its manufacturing out of China to escape its rising labor cost. Its CEO told FT that Coach will cut its China production to about 50 per cent from 80 per cent of its total by opening factories in lower-wage economies including India, Vietnam and the Philippines. Yes, including the Philippines.

The Coach CEO, according to FT, told a Chinese-American Group in New York: “We are subject to rapid wage increases in China among employees working in the manufacturing sector … We are beginning to diversify production out of China into other Asian countries that are not enjoying that level of prosperity.”

According to FT, Li & Fung, a Hong Kong-based consumer goods sourcing and logistics company, said in March that wages had risen by 20 per cent in China this year heralding “a new era in sourcing with higher prices.” Other manufacturers have transferred operations to poorer inland regions of China where wages are lower.

It is nice to read that Coach is considering the Philippines as a potential part of their manufacturing base. Those in the business of EPZA-accredited export processing zones should move quickly to win over the business of Coach. Hopefully, the leftist labor unions do not spoil everything as they always do.

TV text surveys

ABS-CBN did a disservice to the Filipino people by conducting that TV text survey during the Harapan debate on ANC. They gave the wrong impression that it was a proper measure of public sentiment so that even the headline in the column of one of my fellow columnists stated wrongly that “Pinoys don’t support the RH bill.” The scientific surveys of SWS and Pulse Asia have time and again indicated massive support for the bill, even among Catholics.

Not everyone realizes it is easy for any group to manipulate the results of those TV text surveys by mobilizing text brigades. At best, the so called text poll is sheer entertainment. But it can be dangerously misleading. TV stations should not reduce important public affairs issues into a sabong, which is what those so called instant polls do. ABS-CBN uses that gimmick on TV Patrol every night. They should provide a proper disclaimer, if they are to be true to their mission of informing the public rather than misleading while making oodles of money (every text vote is charged).

Lawyers

Atty. Sonny Pulgar sent this one.

Two small boys, not yet old enough to be in school, were overheard talking at the zoo one day.

“My name is Billy. What’s yours?” asked the first boy.

“Tommy,” replied the second.

“My Daddy’s an accountant. What does your Daddy do for a living?” asked Billy.

Tommy replied, “My Daddy’s a lawyer.”

“Honest?” asked Billy.

“No, just the regular kind”, replied Tommy.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. He is also on Twitter @boochanco