Growing but still lagging behind

Amid falling performance ratings and constant carping from critics, the administration has something to crow about. The other day, Socio-economic Planning Secretary Felipe Medalla announced that after contracting 0.3 percent in 1998, the country's gross domestic product grew 4.6 percent in the last three months of 1999, for a full-year growth of 3.2 percent. This year the government is projecting GDP growth of 4-5 percent. The 1999 growth was spurred largely by the 6.6 percent growth in the agriculture sector -- a reversal from the previous year's contraction due to El Niño and La Niña. Medalla said agricultural output is expected to slow down to 3-3.5 percent this year, with the industrial sector expected to lead the growth.

The 1999 growth was higher than what the government projected. Medalla said the figure was "not unremarkable" considering industrial restructuring and debt work-out. Some economic analysts, however, were unimpressed, pointing out that the nation could have done better since exports and farm output were high. More significantly, they noted that neighboring countries were doing better as the region emerges from its worst post-war economic crisis.

South Korea, one of the worst hit by the crisis, is leading the region with projected 1999 growth of 10.2 percent. China has announced a 7.1 percent growth while Singapore is projecting 5.4 percent. Even Malaysia, which continues to be rocked by political instability, expects 5 percent growth. Behind the Philippines is strife-torn Indonesia, which is expecting minimal growth of 0.1 percent, and Hong Kong, still adjusting to its handover to China, which is projecting 2 percent growth. Even Thailand, the first to be hit by the financial crisis, expects growth of 4-5 percent.

What are they doing right? Or better yet, what are we doing wrong? It will do well for the administration to ask these questions as nations brace for stiff competition in this new millennium. It is not enough for Malacañang to brush aside accusations or perceptions of a government seemingly without direction, of corruption and cronyism, of a rudderless ship. Rather than bask in the "not unremarkable" growth in 1999, the government must get moving so the Philippines will stop lagging behind its neighbors.