Powerless

As summer deepens, the brownouts in Mindanao grow longer. The people of what was once called the Land of Promise are furious — not only because nothing was done to relieve the shortfall — but also because the Manila-centric national media seems completely indifferent to the problem.

The power shortage in the country’s second biggest island is forcing the local economy to the ground. Businesses are absorbing massive losses. Tourist-oriented establishments are losing their clients. The hot days are intolerable in all the homes denied power.

So many questions are raised.

Why is it that the power distribution system in Mindanao is not connected to the national grid like the major islands of the Visayas are so they may avail of surplus power from other regions? How come the inefficiently run hydropower plants have not been privatized as directed by the Epira law? Why is there no policy support for agribusinesses prepared to invest in such things as small biomass generation plants that feed excess electricity back to the grid?

In many of the outlying islands of the Luzon and Visayas regions, scores of mini hydroelectric plants were built over the past decade. Why are there none for Mindanao?

There are windmills in the Ilocos and none for Mindanao. In most of the country, the dilapidated generation facilities once run by government have been sold to investors and have been refurbished. Not in Mindanao. There generating facilities have been shut down and new power investment proposals have gathered dust in the desks of bureaucrats.

One company, Agus 3 Hydropower Corporation, has been prepared to invest billions to build a green energy plant that will add over 300 megawatts to the Mindanao grid. The project remains on the drawing board, however.

When Agus 3 HC wrote then secretary of energy Rene Almendras, it took all of two years for the official to reply. Almendras’ utter lack of enthusiasm for new energy projects puzzles investors. In Mindanao, there are all sorts of conspiracy theories about this, most having to do with Almendras’ former employers.

At any rate, Almendras’ inaction during the time he was energy secretary creates this fact: the earliest any new generating capacity will be available will be 2015. That is if the people of Mindanao have any luck at all.

The latest statistical report showing rising rates of poverty in Mindanao should not be surprising. Poverty cannot be reduced without new jobs. There cannot be new jobs without new businesses. There cannot be new businesses without reliable power supplies.

As a reward for his unremarkable performance at the DOE, Almendras was kicked upstairs to become secretary for the entire Cabinet. It is true what they say about our bureaucracy: no one gets punished for doing nothing.

His replacement will need time for the usual learning curve. It seems we are still at that curve.

Meanwhile the people of Mindanao toil in darkness.

Blowback

Let’s hope it is not true that NEDA secretary Arsenio Balisacan was unceremoniously booted out of the presidential entourage to Brunei because the report of the statistical board on poverty displeased those with the power to do just that.

The statistical board reported that not only has the poverty rate remained constant the last three years, the absolute number of poor people actually increased with population growth. Poverty actually spiked in the ARMM, the region supposedly benefitting from this government’s preferential treatment.

President Aquino left no doubt about his displeasure as he publicly questioned the statistics reported out. If government cannot believe its own statisticians, what can it believe in - its own propaganda?

Arsi Balisacan is the country’s foremost expert on poverty studies. A lifelong scholar, he will be the last person to fudge the numbers just to please the powers-that-be, especially if they are in a constant state of denial.

The most recent poverty report torpedoed all the pompous claims made by the official propagandists. It undermines all ignorant talk about present growth being “inclusive.” It calls into question the wisdom of the conditional cash transfer program - the only actual program targeted at bringing down misery levels among the nation’s poor.

One does not have to be an economist to understand that the gross domestic product can grow without benefitting all. One does not have to be a statistician to understand that constant poverty levels in the midst of macroeconomic expansion can only mean widening inequality. Yet these items seem to be ill-understood at the very top of government.

The poverty report, while it became the past week’s conversation piece, is hardly surprising.

Our economic expansion, while remarkable, is driven by remittance-based consumption, not by investments. We have among the worst investment rate in the region. Without expanding our productive asset base, all talk of “inclusive growth” will be empty.

This government does not have a comprehensive strategy for expanding popular access to productive assets, no clear plan for dispersing investments so that they benefit the most disadvantaged sections and no real vision for competitiveness in the new century. What it has is an oversimplified, mono-causal and politically opportunistic theory of poverty: Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap.

That simplistic theory is now vulnerable to political blowback: if incidence of poverty worsens, does that mean the volume of corruption is worse today?

Instead of denying the statistics, this administration should acknowledge poverty is a complex matter and admit its sole strategy of bribing the poor will not suffice.