Modernized agriculture key to RP industrialization

Only a modernized agriculture sector and a significant improvement in the productivity of the country’s small-and-medium enterprises can overcome the periodic setbacks that natural calamities create and raise family incomes so that domestic consumer demand would spur economic growth.

This was the gist of the speech delivered at noon yesterday by former President Fidel Ramos when he addressed the Farewell Conference and Consultative Dialogue with Asian Editors and Publishers organized by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Makati City.

In his speech, Ramos said the bottom-line is that any hope to achieve industrialization is largely dependent on a modernized agriculture which the government must pursue, while at the same time sharpening the country’s global competitiveness.

"We must learn to swim with the sharks or drown in the rising tide of globalization," said Ramos, as he urged the Arroyo administration to re-energize the people by raising before them a vision of a country that can do better than lag behind its neighbors.

He stressed that President Arroyo’s declared goal to reduce poverty within 10 years "is an achievable goal if we can put our act together," adding that the government has to devote the next two years to lay the groundwork for a decade of high growth beginning in 2004.

During this start-up period, he said, government must put in place the key policies the economy will need to expand at peak level.

These strategic policies, Ramos pointed out, should cluster around the basic reforms to insure good governance characterized by transparency, accountability and continuity, a level playing field of enterprises and equal opportunity for the people regardless of socio-economic status.

Notwithstanding the current weakness of the local economy, Ramos said prospective investors will find in the Philippines what he described as its strong economic fundamentals: an adaptable and talented workforce particularly those engaged in what he described as "knowledge jobs."

The availability of qualified engineers, information-technology workers and, a highly literate core of senior managers has made the Philippines an ideal investment destination, he said.

The nation, however, must redouble its efforts to achieve unity and teamwork in dealing with the devastation that the deposed President Joseph Estrada left behind him, he added.

Ramos said these include a towering budget deficit, a debauched stock market, a depreciated currency, and most significantly, the erosion of confidence which has not yet been restored seven months following Estrada’s ouster.

Ramos said the country needs a prolonged period of political stability so that Filipino workers and businessmen can begin its goal of increasing social wealth to effectively fight poverty which is prevalent among a large segment of the citizenry.

He said the peace initiatives of the Arroyo administration are a step in the right direction and that he fully supports the military action against the Abu Sayyaf whom he described as plain terrorists and bandits.

Amid the economic recovery efforts being initiated by the government and the private sector, Ramos said the central task of the Filipino people is to help build strong political institutions that will lead to an effective and efficient state.

President Arroyo, he added, is right in identifying as among her basic goals the improvement of moral standards in politics and in government and of instilling a sense of civic and corporate responsibility in the national community.

Ramos said he remains confident that given the country’s strong economic foundation the Philippines will be able to post respectable growth rates within the next three years.

He said Asian economies including the Philippines will continue to grow once the Association of Southeast Asian Nations heads of states push through with its ASEAN plus three initiative which will organize an East Asian economic group incorporating the 10 Southeast Asian states plus China, Japan and South Korea.