Gross National Happiness

Last Wednesday evening, Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima and his DOF team, dropped by The Philippine Star to exchange views with us. Mostly, he was selling us the administration’s supposed economic program which he calls Aquinomics. As it turns out, Aquinomics isn’t so much a vision for our economic future but a strategy for making a noticeable difference in the lives of our people who are mostly in poverty.

Purisima explained that Aquinomics is focused on four pillars: fiscal sustainability and macroeconomic stability, infrastructure, good governance, and investment in people. Reacting to criticisms that they have been slow in putting a program to dramatically uplift the economy, he urged people to be patient in their expectations because given the magnitude of the problem, things will take time.

“Laying the foundation is important,” Purisima stressed, “so that confidence would improve and investments would come in. We have been busy setting the foundation for economic growth,” the finance chief said. He then proudly pointed out that they have, over the past year, been able to “put an environment in place that has placed the Philippines back on the radar screen of investors by improving governance in the country and fighting corruption.”

Purisima and his team then went on to recite a litany of numbers they have crunched to prove they are making progress in such things as tax collection, cleaning up Customs and achieving fiscal discipline. Purisima was particularly proud of the work done by the National Treasury in making our government’s debt obligations more manageable. He also boasted that unlike previous administrations, they can claim an “honest, transparent and accountable leadership.”

Today, after one year, Purisima declared that the country is back on track, with reserves at historic highs and borrowing costs down, a balance of payments surplus, moderate inflation, and deficit targets within range. There is now more breathing room on the fiscal side, he said, because they are more circumspect in spending. He said they are constantly making sure the taxpayers get more bang for every peso deployed. “Now, even if we’re deploying less, we’re accomplishing more,” he declared.

So I asked Purisima if P-Noy will finally unfold his grand vision of what he hopes the Philippines will be in five years. Purisima replied that the vision is precisely that… good governance.

I told him good governance is not a vision but a tactic or maybe, a strategy to achieve something loftier. Purisima insists they are going after measurable results and to him, that’s 99-percent execution. “It’s really all about execution,” he argued “… execution is the real key more than vision.”

Oh well. I was not surprised. Purisima had been a numbers cruncher all his life and the details are mostly what number crunchers see. But being a communications person, I tend to think in terms of concepts that wrap up everything in a neat package that captures the essence of the program. In communications, we need a big picture that will inspire the people.

Listening to Purisima explain the details of Aquinomics, I could see the vision of P-Noy or what he seems to want himself to be remembered for after his term. I can see that P-Noy knows Ate Glue’s “trickle down” approach is definitely not enough. We have seen how the so called respectable GDP figures of Ate Glue benefited only a small segment of our population. In fact, poverty incidence and hunger worsened.

So P-Noy has a new buzzword: inclusive growth. Here is what Chapter 1 of the Philippine Development Plan recently released by NEDA says about it: “Inclusive growth means, first of all, growth that is rapid enough to matter, given the country’s population, geographical differences, and social complexity.  It is sustained growth that creates jobs, draws the majority into the economic and social mainstream, and continuously reduces mass poverty. This is an ideal which the country has perennially fallen short of …” P-Noy plans to do more than wait for the benefits of growth to trickle down… he wants to reduce Philippine poverty by nearly 10 points in six years.

Economist Mahar Mangahas, who had been tracking poverty and hunger for years, is not impressed. He wrote: “My first comment is that it has never been done before. To cut poverty by 10 points in six years requires more than new buzzwords. I, for one, am willing for the government to focus almost solely on anti-poverty programs, and let growth take care of itself.”

That’s exactly what I mean. P-Noy does have a vision whether he and Purisima realizes it or not. And that vision puts an emphasis on making the numbers or the favorable economic indicators mean something for the ordinary folks out there. But they may not be doing or planning to do enough to realize that vision. Aquinomics may just fall short of the vision even if they meet their targets.

Still, it is good they have that vision. That’s why P-Noy had given much importance to the conditional cash transfer program (CCT). You can see it too when he says he wants to invest in people in terms of education, training and health care. P-Noy has apparently given out the marching orders that he will not be happy to merely see good GDP numbers. He would be measuring his success or failure in terms of how happy people are during his term.

P-Noy is not the first head of state to think not just in terms of GDP but also GNH or Gross National Happiness. The first was the King of Bhutan. More recently, it was French President Nicholas Sarkozy.

A couple of years ago, Mr Sarkozy announced a “revolutionary” plan to make joy and wellbeing the key indicators of growth, rather than traditional yardsticks like a country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

Mr. Sarkozy asked US economist Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel economics prize and a critic of free-market economists, and Armatya Sen of India, who won the 1998 Nobel Prize for work on developing countries, to come up with the new measures. The two Nobel laureates in Economics recommended a shift in emphasis on gross domestic product to one which measures wellbeing and “sustainability”.

So maybe, what P-Noy really has in mind, his vision, is more in line with increasing Gross National Happiness. The thing is, for us, that means significantly reducing poverty levels. This can be measured by cold numbers captured by the GNP statistics. Or by survey data on how many Filipinos go hungry each day.

 Attaining happiness in our context is still quite basic… not going hungry. Some of the measures mentioned in the Gross National Happiness concept being discussed by some Western economists such as figures relating to work-life balance, recycling, household chores and even levels of traffic congestion are probably relevant after we conquer hunger.

That’s why the fourth pillar of Aquinomics, investment in people – giving Filipinos health care, education and the skills necessary to become “productive participants in the economy,” is the one clear route to increasing our people’s Gross National Happiness. The CCT is effectively just a kind of emergency tactic being resorted to because of the direness of our situation.

But these are all long term undertakings. P-Noy needs to do something quickly to capture the people’s imagination that indeed, his leadership is making a clear difference. I wrote last Friday about how Mar is using the “broken window” philosophy to show he is able to deliver quick results like fixing the service provided by the MRT/LRT. There are also similar things that could be done in other areas of government that would deliver the same message.

P-Noy should make sure his officials are able to deliver excellent front line services. This means quick, courteous and corruption-free services in front line government agencies like DFA in issuing passports and NBI in issuing clearances, traffic management, police services, business permits, POEA services, LTO, justice system, etc. I know it somehow seems difficult if not impossible to impose a new service culture on top of the rotten and corrupt system in place. But that’s the challenge that must be met. They must deliver discernible improvement in public services by front line agencies so that people will feel happy paying their taxes and doing their share in the difficult task of nation building.

The long term vision can be summed up by the concept of Gross National Happiness. But getting there requires a great number of tactics and approaches such as dramatically improved governance that only a truly honest and competent leadership can deliver. In today’s SONA, I will look for indicators that show P-Noy is serious in delivering a vastly increased level of happiness among our people.

Serving justice

Someone whose number my phone didn’t recognize, texted me this one.

The lawyer of you-know-who, the one who announced absence in today’s SONA, reportedly texted his client: Justice has triumphed.

The client texted back: Appeal immediately.

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