Economic growth beyond Metro Manila

I met a woman who works at a salon in Pasig. She shampoos and blow-dries customers’ hair and assists the stylists. She lives in Bulacan. To get home, she spends about P150 on a motorcycle ride to Cubao, P100 on a bus to Bulacan and another P50 on a tricycle to reach her house. Her trip to work costs roughly the same.

That’s around P600 a day just to get to and from work. She earns close to the minimum wage.
Some will see this as a transportation problem. In part, it is. We need cheaper, faster and more reliable public transport. But it is also a problem of where jobs are located.
Too much economic activity remains concentrated in Metro Manila, forcing workers from Bulacan and other nearby provinces to spend hours — and a large share of their income — just to reach their places of work.

We have spent years thinking about how to move people more efficiently into the city. We should put equal effort into making it easier for businesses and jobs to move outside it.

That is why investment in places like Bulacan should be taken seriously.

Bulacan has millions of residents and sits beside the country’s largest economic center. Yet many of its workers still travel south every day because that is where so many of the jobs are.

The new airport being built in the province is usually discussed in aviation terms: more capacity, more flights, another international gateway.
But its bigger economic value lies in what it brings with it.

Airports do not operate in isolation. They attract logistics firms, cargo operators, warehouses, hotels, offices, transport services, retailers and suppliers. Those businesses create jobs of their own and give more companies reasons to locate nearby

That is how a major infrastructure project can begin to change where economic activity happens.
The salon worker I met does not need to work at the airport to benefit from the economic activity it could generate.

The real question is whether it can help create enough business activity in Bulacan that more jobs — of all kinds — begin to move closer to where people already live.

That is the broader economic case for the project: not simply the jobs inside the airport, but the possibility of creating a new center of employment outside Metro Manila.

Any discussion of development in Bulacan, however, eventually comes up against the issue of flooding Critics have blamed the airport project for worsening floods and have questioned why such a large investment should be made in a low-lying province.
San Miguel Corp. is putting billions of dollars into an airport meant to operate for generations.

No serious investor does that while assuming flooding, subsidence and rising sea levels will somehow take care of themselves.

Those risks have to be engineered for from the start.
Flood management is therefore not separate from the airport’s success.

It is part of it. An airport cannot function well if the roads leading to it are regularly impassable. Companies will not invest around it if workers and goods cannot move reliably.

The success of the airport therefore depends not only on protecting the airport site, but also on making sure the infrastructure around it — rivers, drainage, access roads and transport links — can support the development taking place.

The airport will not solve Bulacan’s flooding problems on its own. Nor should anyone claim that it will. But flooding should not mean that Bulacan cannot develop.

And this is where those who want the project stopped should also be asked a fair question: what is the alternative? If not this airport, then what will bring investment, businesses and large-scale employment into Bulacan? What will create enough economic activity so that fewer workers have to leave the province every morning just to earn a living? And what is the plan for improving the infrastructure and flood resilience that Bulacan needs with or without an airport?
Opposing a project is one thing. Offering a credible alternative that improves people’s lives is another. Bulacan’s problems will not disappear if development is stopped. People will still need jobs. Rivers will still need to be managed.

Roads and drainage will still need investment. Workers will still be commuting to Metro Manila.
The better question is whether development can be designed for the conditions that already exist — and whether major investments can help support the infrastructure needed to manage those conditions better.

The same principle applies to jobs. If we want companies to locate outside Metro Manila, we have to make those places practical and competitive places to do business: reliable infrastructure, efficient permitting, good transport links, utilities and a workforce companies can hire.
For workers, the difference can be enormous.

A P750-a-day job in Pasig is not really the same as a P750-a-day job closer to one’s home if the first requires P600 in daily transportation. The wage may look the same on paper. What is left at the end of the day is not.
For the woman I met, a better future may not be a faster trip from Bulacan to Pasig. It may simply be a good job close to home.

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