A certain pizza place we shall now disguise behind the name Norwich Pizza had been acquired by a large food conglomerate we shall call Bumblebee Food Corporation for purposes of discussion. BFC sought to turn Norwich from a simple mom and pop type of operation into a [...]]]> Tweet

A certain pizza place we shall now disguise behind the name Norwich Pizza had been acquired by a large food conglomerate we shall call Bumblebee Food Corporation for purposes of discussion. BFC sought to turn Norwich from a simple mom and pop type of operation into a highly profitable nationwide franchise.

It set about doing this by hiring a very prominent ad agency to deliver a strong and appealing message to the public. The firm wisely picked a celebrity, a certain Ms Nonita Flowers, to be in their commercials.

Within months of the launch of the media campaign, sales rose rather well in line with projections made by the company’s bean counters. Unfortunately, after a quarter of stellar performance, revenues started to head south quite dramatically. This puzzled the head honchos at BFC. Everything had been proceeding according to plan until very recently. What had happened?

To investigate and remedy the situation, one of BFC’s vice presidents who successfully steered another major acquisition, the Chun King Express, was brought in. The vice president proceeded to inspect the premises of Norwich. Within a month or two, he had not only arrested the decline in sales, but restored it to its previous trajectory.

So how did he do it?

Well, having cut his teeth in the fast and furious world of Chinese takeaway, the vice president of Chun King knew the importance of maintaining good customer service. This could only be achieved if the stores were equipped with proper equipment particularly in the kitchen. Within the first few weeks of his assignment, the new manager had placed orders for new ovens to replace or augment the standard kit that had been originally installed in Norwich stores, which he deemed highly inadequate.

The capital investment paid off and Bumblebee proceeded to earn a positive return on its acquisition of Norwich, albeit at a lower rate in the first year than previously expected due to the unforeseen expenditures. The vice president was given a fat bonus for his efforts in rescuing the venture. Money well spent from the point of view of BFC’s board and stockholders.

This case study demonstrates the importance of coupling good marketing with good operations. Without a quality product, no amount of spending on ad campaigns could restore or improve the brand’s sinking reputation. In the fast food business, it doesn’t matter how tasty the food might be, if customers have to wait too long, they won’t be coming back.

The same can be said of tourism and travel. The Department of Tourism under Sec Jimenez is looking to increase the flow of visitors into the country with a catchy slogan, “It’s more fun in the Philippines” and the usual slick marketing campaign. It is in talks with Singapore to co-brand the two nations as the “sunshine belt”.

These ideas are brilliant, but the problem is that the Ninoy Aquino International Airport is already operating above its normal capacity with visible signs of wear and tear all too evident. Even with the renovation of Terminal 1 and the recent conclusion of the decade’s long case involving Terminal 3 paving the way for the full use of it for international flights, these developments will not unclog the bottlenecks due to the limited number of runways. No amount of renovations will fix that as there is no more room for expansion. As arrivals are slated to rise from 3.9 million in 2011 to 4.2 million this year, how will the airport cope?

This problem is compounded by the growth in domestic flights. During my recent visit to the Philippines, I spent an hour waiting at the departure lounge of the domestic terminal in Manila for a flight to Kalibo. The reason given for the delay was “heavy congestion”. After boarding the plane, we were grounded for close to another hour waiting to be cleared for take-off. As the plane finally taxied onto the runway, I stared at my watch, then at the frustrated businessman seated next to me.

“Only two hours delayed, not bad,” I jokingly uttered. He laughed. That was all we could do to cope with the situation.

The same thing occurred on the way back. As the voice boomed in the speaker stating that our flight was behind schedule, a power outage stopped it in mid-sentence. It was nearing nightfall and the blackout was quite a shock to the passengers.

“It’s more fun in the Philippines!” I heard a man snicker in the darkness.

Meanwhile on a separate road trip up to Northern Luzon, our convoy experienced a very weary trek. Each town we passed through, every ten kilometres or so, caused us to slowdown as their town hall plazas, central markets, public schools and cemeteries were all located along the main artery causing both vehicular and pedestrian traffic.

The road widening still unfinished due to the slow spending rate of public works projects in 2011 delayed our trip in certain sections. We were told that an extension of the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway would provide better access to the North bypassing most of these populous towns from Tarlac to La Union, but our guide said this had been halted by the new administration. It was clear though that such a road project was long overdue.

That’s as far as infrastructure and transport corridors are concerned. We haven’t discussed the problem of environmental degradation. In both Baguio and Boracay where I took my family, the effects of what urban planners call regional agglomeration were quite evident. Tourism was enticing a major “big box” shopping center to expand in Baguio. Such a move could upset the already congested situation, worsening the air quality, not to mention the aesthetic and cultural appeal of the tourist destination.

Meanwhile, I was shocked to see D’Mall in Boracay. It sort of depressed me actually. I ended up skipping lunch because I had lost my appetite after seeing this transplanting of Divisoria or Baclaran to the once pristine island. It made me wonder if there was such a thing as having too much fun in the Philippines.

If tourism was sold to our government planners as an environmentally safer path towards development compared to industry or mining, I say, think again. There are no free lunches as economists are wont to say. We can’t expect rapid development not to have an impact on the natural habitat. It would be dangerous to think so.

I actually prefer having a greater emphasis on industry, because you can at least concentrate the site of industrial projects within a confined area and choose the type of industries (say light industries or agro-industrial ventures with a smaller ecological footprint) or provide incentives and regulations to govern the heavy polluting ones.

The Philippines has a lot of catching up to do in this area. I am not simply speaking of tourism now. Wasn’t inclusive, sustainable growth and development at the heart of PNoy’s social compact though? This administration like its predecessors is fond of catchy slogans beginning with Daang Matuwid (Righteous Path). It’s more fun is just the latest. But apart from having these platitudes, where is the plan? We have yet to see a blue print for developing the infrastructure, the security, the regulations and incentives that would responsibly manage the growth in our economy? The case of Norwich must be heeded; otherwise, the Philippines could remain grounded for a bit longer.

Talk to the pundits and commentators and hear their lamentations over the sluggish fourth quarter GDP growth figures of last year. Talk to the investment analysts and you hear a very different story.

Having used up much column space last year predicting an inevitable slowdown of the growth [...]]]> Tweet

Talk to the pundits and commentators and hear their lamentations over the sluggish fourth quarter GDP growth figures of last year. Talk to the investment analysts and you hear a very different story.

Having used up much column space last year predicting an inevitable slowdown of the growth rate, and seeing it materialize, I find it useless to now cry over spilt milk. The government will try to paint a rosy picture, seeing the glass as half-full to counter the reasonable level of criticism it has to cop for tripping over itself. But as someone whose warnings and predictions came true, I would rather focus on the future, not the past.

The reason why analysts seem quite bullish over the country’s prospects is that they see the pipeline of projects that are either underway or about to flow through. It has taken about a year and a half to lay the groundwork, but the government has finally regained its footing. Forget about the invisible hand, last year it was the government’s usually visible boot that failed to leave an imprint.

If government was primarily the cause for the deceleration in growth last year as the external environment gradually deteriorated, this year external factors will pull growth down as both fiscal and monetary policy seek to restore it to its normal trajectory. If uncertainty persists in the EU, if President Obama gets his wish and the US Congress enacts laws to limit outsourcing, if the situation in the Middle East particularly in Iran continues to boil over, it could deflate the economy and counteract many of the measures government puts in place to invigorate it.

Despite all these what ifs there is still much reason to be buoyant if you are an analyst comparing the Philippines with other potential investment sites. The impeachment trial is a mere distraction from their point of view. Regardless of whether the prosecution or defence wins the case, it will not have a shred of influence over the current spend program. That is the good news. As far as the domestic economy is concerned, there should be a decoupling of political and economic events.

Portfolio foreign investments are sure to flow through the local bond market as the major players in the Phisix are set to corner different contracts under the public-private partnership program. They will thus have to raise capital as they breach their single borrower limits with the banks that they control. Forget about foreign direct investments, this is FDI by stealth.

As the government shifts the external debt obligations from the public to the private sector, the question now is whether it will have the fiscal fortitude to use the inflow of foreign currency in a more productive manner than just parking it with US treasury at near zero interest rates.

A more impactful use of these reserves would be to complement physical infrastructure investments by the private sector with economic and social infrastructure investments in education, health and housing. What the country needs is to plug the deficits in these areas of government spending.

But that is merely the first step. The next one would be to fund and implement the completion of the land reform program and to make agriculture and pockets of industry resilient to the global downturn and the emerging global business environment over the coming years. To do the latter, the government will have to roll-out a package of tax incentives and subsidies to boost productivity and encourage investment in capacity.

Of course there is nothing particularly new or fresh to this agenda. The extent to which governments become distracted or side-tracked from it by internal and external events, man-made or natural, self-inflicted or otherwise, determine to a great extent how successful they become in building prosperity and opportunity for all.

So perhaps in this year of the water dragon, the government could focus on letting the money flow so that our country gets what it needs and raises its clout as one of Asia’s newer economic dragons.

The Philippines it seems is engulfed in all things Hollywood at the moment. With the filming of the Bourne Legacy taking place in Manila filling the nightly news with human interest stories surrounding both actors and extras, another “courtroom drama” was unfolding in the Senate with the [...]]]> Tweet

The Philippines it seems is engulfed in all things Hollywood at the moment. With the filming of the Bourne Legacy taking place in Manila filling the nightly news with human interest stories surrounding both actors and extras, another “courtroom drama” was unfolding in the Senate with the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona.

Meanwhile, as the president hosted the Thai PM Yingluck Shinawatra, you could be forgiven for thinking your were watching an episode of “The Bachelor” unfold as all the major dailies focused on these two eligible single ASEAN leaders visibly at ease in each other’s company. Kris Aquino, the president’s irrepressible match-making “gossip girl” kicked things off. Such a diversion might have been timely, as the president’s ex-girlfriend was betrothed to marry a prominent congressman barely a few years after their own public version of “The Break-Up”.

All this talk of romance swamped the more substantive purpose of the Thai PM’s trip. Investment and trade flows are not quite as important as the bonds of friendship and affection it would seem. However, despite the superficiality with which this visit has been depicted, there is one important lesson that the Philippines needs to heed from the Thai experience.

With “love brewing”, it is easy to forget the controversy swirling in both the Thai PM’s and the Philippine president’s countries. Political instability and turmoil have hounded both nations. But the lesson from Thailand that I would like to draw on comes from its path to development which led to its overtaking the Philippines back in the 1980s. Their experience could be very instructive for us today as we grapple with how to make our local industries more competitive.

Back in the 1970s, the price of Thai garments were found to be 30% more expensive compared to the world market. To deal with this situation, the local association of garments makers decided to raise a levy on each spindle. The revenue raised was used to subsidize exporters. The amount of transfers depended on the volume of exports. A subcommittee set up by the Thai Textiles Manufacturing Association monitored and enforced such an agreement.

But even after taking this collective course of action, garments were still 20% more expensive when compared with competing products overseas. They then turned to the Bank of Thailand to cut energy rates and lower interest on trade bills for exporters. They persuaded the government to grant rebates on business taxes and import duties. This effectively dealt with the remaining price differential. As a result Thailand was able to break into international markets.

From this specific case*, we can begin to make some general inferences. The Thai experience shows us that the private sector should not simply wait for government to come to its aid. Domestic players need to band together and work out solutions for themselves. It is only when they have taken the initiative but still fall short that government needs to step in and provide them with the necessary incentives and support to bridge any remaining gaps.

As our exporters grapple with high fuel and energy costs and a rising peso, there is the temptation to think that we simply need to let the market dictate what products we specialize in in terms of the global supply chain. The prevailing economic philosophy governing our policy elite frowns upon subsidies and tariffs, viewing them as distortions that make markets less efficient. Worse, they tend to view these things as symptomatic of poor governance and as sources of corruption and rent-seeking.

What the Thai experience tells us is that this is not necessarily the case. Rent-seeking, particularly the kind that encourages innovation and productivity, can play a central role in national development. It takes a set of very broad minded policy and business leaders to propose such unconventional solutions. Even the leading exponents of market orthodoxy are beginning to acknowledge that without such out of the box thinking, we may end up with no manufacturing base to speak of.

If the president is interested in leaving behind a legacy beyond simply jailing his predecessor and her cohorts, it is time his administration began looking beyond the traditional policy toolkit. Such a new direction would help push the country’s growth and employment rate above its historical trend. The sustained trajectory of Thailand’s economy since the 1980s and our own under-performance during the same period should provide us with enough reason to chart such a new path.

It is not a romance with Thailand’s PM that we should be encouraging, but rather, a love affair with their formula for economic success. In the parlance of reality TV, it should be less, “The Farmer Wants a Wife” and more “Celebrity Apprentice”.

*The case of the Thai garments sector during the 1970s discussed here is based on the chapter of Richard F Doner and Ansil Ramsay in a book edited by Mushtaq Khan and Jomo K. S. entitled Rents, Rent-Seeking and Economic Development: Theory and Evidence in Asia first published in 2000 by the Cambridge University Press.

In its latest release of The World by 2050 report this month, HSBC elevated the prospects for the Philippines projecting it would be the 16th largest economy by mid-century. This is in stark contrast to where the country was positioned last year, outside the top 40, a remarkable [...]]]> Tweet

In its latest release of The World by 2050 report this month, HSBC elevated the prospects for the Philippines projecting it would be the 16th largest economy by mid-century. This is in stark contrast to where the country was positioned last year, outside the top 40, a remarkable leap in the space of a year. What fundamental change occurred to merit such a fantastic rise of 27 places from 43rd to 16th place?

Actually, the upgrade in the country’s prospects began in 2005 with the publication by Goldman Sachs of a paper, which included the Philippines among the “Next 11″ or N-11 countries whose GDP would rival some of the advanced G-7 nations by 2050. Earlier this year, Citibank published a paper extolling the virtues of the Philippine economy by including it among a group of “3G countries” that have the “global growth generators” or 3G’s.

From an interview with the ANC (since the bank has yet to publish its report online), the head of the Philippine country office pinned it down mostly to monetary and fiscal settings. The healthy balance of payments position, complemented by the conservative fiscal position alongside a vibrant domestic economy and positive demographics or population growth all combined to place the country on the map.

Regardless of how accurate these projections are (in the case of HSBC, the numbers look dubious, with seven percent growth on average expected from now until mid-century), there can be no doubt as to their effect on capital flows.

‘Tis the Season

As the Bangko Sentral adjusted interest rates downward as a signal to the local economy to start investing or consuming more, there was talk of yet another credit upgrade in the offing for the Philippines. We could be the next country following Indonesia to be given investment grade status by these agencies. The outlook for the country was recently upgraded from stable to positive signalling such an upgrade.

If this trend continues, it would mean a steady stream of “hot money” into our local stock market which is already soaring. It would also mean lower borrowing costs for both our government and corporations seeking to raise capital from international bond markets.

But as the ironic maxim goes in the financial community, it is when banks are willing to lend that you don’t need to borrow. As investment banks queue up to lend to the national government, it is time that they begin to assess whether they need to borrow from abroad at all, or whether it would help the local economy to utilize the excess foreign reserves of the Bangko Sentral to finance its fiscal deficit.

For one, it would enable the BSP to earn a higher rate of return compared to purchasing US treasury notes which are earning close to zero percent. Two, it would  help temper the peso’s strength and help the families of overseas Filipinos and exporters. Three, it would reduce the need for the BSP to purchase dollars in the spot market to dampen the peso’s appreciation, helping the bank maintain profitability.

Bragging or bargaining rights?

The government might take all these positive developments as a seal of good housekeeping on its part. The series of credit upgrades which occurred only after the 2010 elections might certainly be construed as the market’s faith in the capacity and competence of the administration to manage its affairs.

But apart from simply bragging about being mentioned in such publications, the government, particularly the finance department, must begin to heed the growing clamor among our central bankers, leading economists, exporters and ordinary Filipinos to plan a sustainable path of development as it seeks to balance its own books.

Regardless of how the world in 2050 might appear to its financiers, it needs to demonstrate the independence and autonomy required of it to plot a course in line with the nation’s interests. HSBC and other global investment banks might simply be positioning their products to our finance people. It takes courage and resolve on their part to either use our strong position as leverage or simply walk away from the table.

With the release of third quarter GDP figures upsetting all but the most ardent economic apologists for this administration, the time has come for it to re-think its priorities.

The situation is nearing a critical level. As the whole of Europe is placed on credit watch [...]]]> Tweet

With the release of third quarter GDP figures upsetting all but the most ardent economic apologists for this administration, the time has come for it to re-think its priorities.

image from wallpapers-diq.net

The situation is nearing a critical level. As the whole of Europe is placed on credit watch and as recovery in the US struggles for momentum, the vibrancy in the domestic economy is being sucked out by government’s poor infrastructure spending rate just at a time when it is needed. Cabinet officials throughout the year have been promising a more rapid deployment, but this has so far not materialized.

The incorrigible ‘prophet of boom’ from the Ateneo Graduate School of Business Cielito Habito despite his best efforts at painting a rosy picture for the government has himself acknowledged the third quarter results to be disappointing. Here is how this professor of ‘Aquinomics’ concludes his most recent column for the Inquirer entitled, Is confidence dissipating?

(W)hat worries me most is the possible dissipation of the initial confidence surge that greeted the new administration and led to brisk private domestic investment growth over the past year. With these private domestic investment numbers now apparently slowing down while price increases have been speeding up, the President and his men on top of the economy should keep a close eye on the ball—or risk losing steam altogether (emphasis added).

That’s it—the penny has finally dropped. Only a delusional person would keep insisting that the government is headed in the right direction when it comes to managing the economy. Will this lead to a teachable moment, or will the administration remain antagonized by criticism seeing sinister plots behind them, spooked by shadows and haunted by the spectre of its immediate predecessor?

Throughout the year, the government has continued to fall back on its good poll figures to demonstrate that it has been performing to the satisfaction of the people. Poll figures however may not be a good barometer of the government’s competence in economic affairs given the ‘halo effect’ that has made the administration appear more creditable than it should.

Market analysts have already pointed out and the Bangko Sentral agrees that stimulating greater demand to address the slowdown in growth lies not in the hands of monetary authorities at this point but with fiscal managers. What this means is that the government has to spend more and talk less. Or in the words of Jerry Maguire, it has to “show me the money!”

All talk, no action

The government talks profusely about the need to ramp up infrastructure spending in its Philippine Development Plan released early this year (see page 17). “An inefficient transport network and unreliable power supply”  is what has created a poor investment climate according to the Plan. Solving this meant greater spending, but when it comes to actually delivering on this, the government fell short of its rhetoric. Next year’s appropriations will hit a mere 2.5%, when the benchmark for a middle income country such as ours is 5% of GDP.

P-Noy in his first SONA said that the infrastructure build-up would be achieved through public-private partnerships, but nearly eighteen months on and counting, the fulfillment of the now diminished scope of this program remains to be seen. The confidence of the business community will eventually wear thin as Habito suggests if delays persist.

When the president addressed a meeting of the Makati Business Club, a community highly supportive of his candidacy, there was some disappointment over his over-emphasis on the case against former president Gloria Arroyo and his squabble with the Supreme Court. As these businessmen suggest, the risk is for P-Noy to get so focused on prosecuting Mrs Arroyo that he fails to keep his ‘eye on the ball’.

And it requires some doing. To ramp up spending by 2.5% of GDP will require as much concentration as he can muster. In a ten trillion peso economy, this will mean doubling the present effort of 250 billion pesos a year. This will dwarf  the growth of the CCT or conditional cash transfers which cost about thirty billion.

Because the president closed off the avenue of raising revenues through new taxes, he found himself left with no other option but to fund his development plan through private financing. That has proven tricky as well, which is why he now needs to consider a third option.

That third option which I had first written about late last year which then got echoed by no less than the BSP Governor a few months back is for the government to issue infrastructure bonds to the BSP which is at present earning negative returns on its foreign currency reserves.

Better returns

By offering the Bank a better yield, the government would be doing it a favour. Raul Fabella a former dean of the UP School of Economics has lent this proposal his seal of approval. He believes the risk from runaway inflation to be negligible under the proven monetary stewardship of the BSP.

The continued growth of foreign remittances from OFWs makes this option feasible, but if the government needed further convincing, then the following points should help build the case for it:

1. Infrastructure spending is needed as we face a slowdown of demand from Western economies for our goods and services.
2. It is the best vehicle for avoiding the ‘Dutch disease’ that afflicts countries experiencing windfall profits from resource booms (in our case, this stems from human not natural resources).
3. Unlike increased social entitlement spending during a boom which becomes painful to retract at the end of the cycle, infrastructure spending leaves a tangible legacy and productivity dividend.
4. It will help our exporters remain competitive because the increased spending will lead to a modest rise in inflation which will stem the appreciation of the peso against the greenback.
5. It will unlock complementary investments by the private sector which is being deterred by poor public infrastructure.
6. Government failure will be minimized as most transport and power projects can be turned over to the private sector under a PPP arrangement once completed. Revenue earned from transport and power projects would settle the interest and debt owed to the BSP.
7. It will help prop up employment and growth which will spur increased tax collection.
8. It will reduce the cost of doing business for most firms, not just exporters.
9. It will help achieve the government’s growth target of 5-7% in the medium term.
10. It will fulfill the government’s own development plan and set us on a higher growth plane.

Greater public infrastructure spending not by new taxes, nor by increased external or internal borrowing (as per Mrs Arroyo’s stimulus program in 2008/09), but by tapping our excess foreign currency reserves is not only appropriate, it would be the most effective and innovative way for this government to sustain economic growth through the turbulence in the global economy and beyond.

But we have to get real now. When faced with a possible course of action that is within the feasible set as defined by technocrats, what often prevents governments from acting is not the lack of rational arguments but the incentive problem. What led to this whole debacle in the first place was the administration’s fear of spending that would benefit internal patron-client networks left behind by its predecessor. In other words, politics rather than economics has been driving its decisions.

Making daang matuwid work

In the past we have seen how corruption and rent-seeking have reduced the amount of money available for developmental spending, but now we see how the opposite has reduced that amount even more. In the words of Samuel Huntington, “In terms of economic growth, the only thing worse than a society with a rigid overcentralized, dishonest bureaucracy is one with a rigid, overcentralized honest bureaucracy.”

The challenge for P-Noy is to make his mantra of daang matuwid work for the country rather than against it. Through the discipline and hard work of Filipinos working overseas, the country has a rather unique opportunity to make up for the shortfall in taxes generated internally. The current situation reminds me of the parable of the talents where the honest, but slothful servant dug a hole in the ground to store the talent that was entrusted to him by his master for safekeeping.

The Aquino government is like that servant. It was entrusted with a small but buoyant economy at the beginning of its term. So far, it has managed to keep it afloat, running while standing still, growing on aggregate but shrinking in real per capita terms. At the end of the story, the master reprimands the servant by saying, “To everyone who has will be given, and he will have abundance, but from him who doesn’t have, even that which he has will be taken away.”

That sound a lot like where the economy is heading under the president’s watch. The little that the Philippines had at the start could be taken away from it, while the plenty that our ASEAN neighbours have keeps on growing. It is time this government put its money where its fiscal mouth has been and start showing us the money. From another biblical parable comes the saying, “to whom much is given, much is required.” P-Noy was given a huge electoral mandate back in 2010. It is time he used it.

In uncharacteristically blunt language, US President Obama as host of the APEC summit in Hawaii called on China to act like a “grown up” saying “enough is enough” and that it was time for the People’s Republic to “operate by the same rules that everybody operates” [...]]]> Tweet

The APEC summit in Hawaii (photo courtesy of UPI.com)

In uncharacteristically blunt language, US President Obama as host of the APEC summit in Hawaii called on China to act like a “grown up” saying “enough is enough” and that it was time for the People’s Republic to “operate by the same rules that everybody operates” threatening dire consequences unless the yuan appreciates by 20-25%.

The US has been pressing China to allow its currency the yuan to appreciate more quickly to make American products more affordable to Chinese residents and similarly make Chinese exports less attractive to US based consumers. President Hu’s pragmatic response–allow imports to rise without necessarily liberalizing the currency exchange regime–is typical of the Middle Kingdom.

Unlike America’s faith in free markets, China would rather deliberately get prices wrong if it would allow it to maintain a healthy trade surplus with the US. This after all was the same path to development that the US took when it was still in its “catch-up” phase with Western Europe.

Yet America, with its penchant for universal principles (“we hold these truths to be self-evident”) is now in the game of preaching free trade, open markets and property rights in the Far East just as it preached democracy in the Middle East. China is instinctually groping for a particularistic response. Although sounding undiplomatic, I like Pres Obama’s rhetoric because it gave away an important concession in the development debate.

“Gaming the system” or the notion of applying the tools of industrial policy to generate a competitive advantage for nascent industries in global trade as a legitimate means to catch-up with more advanced economies while a country is still relatively underdeveloped has been acknowledged. In the local vernacular, “saling pusa” which refers to little children allowed to participate in a game without having the same rules applied to them would be the way America views the Chinese.

For those who believe that lowering trade barriers helps promote growth, the following graph taken from Dani Rodrik’s paper to the UN should help dispel that notion. It shows a positive albeit insignificant correlation between tariff levels and economic growth. At best, no correlation can be inferred between lowering barriers to trade and growth, which is why the Philippines despite having very low tariffs relative to its ASEAN neighbors, has not been growing strongly. As I mentioned in my last piece, higher barriers to entry actually have been found to induce domestic innovation that in turn leads to new exports.

Source: Dani Rodrik (2001), The Global Governance of Trade--As If Development Really Mattered: A UNDP Background Paper

This should help comfort those distressed by that CNBC press release that the Philippines is the worst place for doing business in Asia. It should also be noted that in their top ten worst places, India and Indonesia were included. If these are the sorts of countries that we are in league with, then we really should not be too bothered.

Despite that dubious title, one should actually pay attention to the fact that the CNBC pronouncement was based on the World Bank’s Doing Business Report. Many of the measures in this report simply do not apply to businesses within the special economic zones which is more relevant to foreign investors. Furthermore, petty corruption actually allows many of the so-called barriers for entry to be removed.

The main roadblock to foreign direct investments is actually the desire of business to operate with the same protection of contracts and property rights wherever they are along with low costs to entry without the necessary tax burden and industrial labor costs that are needed to foster this. On the other hand, ordinary citizens that politicians seeking re-election (as in the case of Obama) try to please don’t want unfair competition for their labor from less developed countries which try to create a system of arbitrage to attract foreign investors.

It isn’t that investors want a level playing field. Consumers by and large don’t really mind whether a producer competes fairly for a slice of their hip pocket. That means for a country seeking to attract foreign investors increasingly ceding a lot of its national policy-making abilities to Western bodies and institutions to gain access to its markets. Hence the rhetoric of Obama who is trying to create a narrative that would pit the economies in the region against China.

Having ceded the scene for the better part of a decade to Beijing which has forged a free trade deal with ASEAN (CAFTA, the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area), Washington is trying to regain the initiative with its Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement that boasts the commitment of nine APEC countries and counting. China has objected to not being invited to join the agreement. This is clearly a bid by the US to isolate it and strengthen its economic clout in the region.

This week, as he travels en route to the East Asia summit in Bali, Indonesia, the US president is scheduled to make a stopover in Canberra to address the Australian parliament and sign a deal that would increase US troop presence in a base located near Darwin. The two nations have already beefed up the ANZUS mutual defense treaty by allowing allies to invoke it in the case of cyber attacks just as it was used in justifying Australian participation in the US war against terror.

This posturing is clearly aimed at containing Chinese ambitions in the region. America is trying to prevent Australia and its other allies (Japan, Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines) from following in the footsteps of Germany which has been compromised as a NATO ally due to its economy’s dependence on exports to China. Australia sees the need to boost its military capability to help counter the military build-up of China while relying on iron ore exports to China for sustaining health in its economy. Other countries in the region notably Vietnam and the Philippines will seek protection under the US security umbrella given tensions with China over the Spratlys.

PM Julia Gillard earlier this year commissioned her own white paper that would create a strategic road map for Australia in the “Asian century.” Upon her return to Australia, she announced a new position on uranium exports to India, the other emerging power in the region. This back-flip on her party’s existing position to maintain a ban until India signs the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty occurred after a meeting with President Obama .

Meanwhile State secretary Hilary Clinton is set to travel through Bangkok and Manila en route to Bali. She will no doubt seek to emphasize the theme that America is back in business in the region. P-Noy has been keen to float his own ideas about a solution to the Spratlys among allies, but membership in the TPP is very much in doubt as certain hurdles including constitutional restrictions on foreign ownership and weak protection of intellectual property rights prevent the Philippines from being admitted.

This means that the Philippines will engage in free trade with China via CAFTA, while having a military alliance with the US. This is probably the best possible outcome–a good way to counter-balance each competing force on either side of the Pacific. Australian PM Julia Gillard put it best when she said this week,

It is well and truly possible for us in this growing region of the world to have an ally in the US and to have deep friendships in our region including with China.

But for how long this formula will work only time will tell.

The Philippines has been trying to crack open the investment nut by lifting its competitiveness for such a long time but has not been getting very far. Here’s why.

Continuing on from the first part where we looked at the country’s investment gap of over [...]]]> Tweet

The Philippines has been trying to crack open the investment nut by lifting its competitiveness for such a long time but has not been getting very far. Here’s why.

Continuing on from the first part where we looked at the country’s investment gap of over half a trillion pesos a year, we now turn to the problem of how to fill it and bring unemployment down. The imperative to boost competitiveness is based on the notion that low social returns on investment are due to a lack of opportunities to invest due to poor governance, inadequate infrastructure, and bad local finance.

Government failures caused by macro risks like poor fiscal, monetary and financial policies along with micro-risks including corruption, high taxes and weak property rights lead to a lack of incentives for investing in new ideas. These failures block the supply of innovation and investment. While this forms conceivably part of the problem, it does not necessarily explain the entire puzzle.

A missing piece is the demand not forthcoming from entrepreneurs for existing technology and capital even when it is available due to market failures. Dani Rodrik and Ricardo Hausmann talk about how this comes about when there are significant hidden costs associated with information and coordination. I will try to explain these failures using the coconut analogy.

Imagine that several decades after Robinson Crusoe left the island of Despair, a number of coconut plantations were established. The owners of these plantations were competing for a shrinking share of the coconut trade that existed between several islands in the vicinity. To improve their earnings, they each could find different ways of using the coconut. The process of discovering what types of products could be made comes with a cost caused by free-riders.

The evidence shows that low income countries actually develop first by diversifying their exports. The degree of specialization follows a U-shaped curve with income (diversifying more until reaching about the same level of income as Ireland before specializing). They do this by imitating technology already developed in rich countries. Instead of competing by creating new technology, they find cheaper ways of using existing modes of production in diverse sectors.

This process of “self-discovery” as Rodrik termed it often comes at a cost to the first-mover within a country, a cost which imitators do not incur. This creates a market failure because no one is willing to invest in this process since the information generated by it (“which goods can be produced more cheaply at home”) usually cannot be protected by patents.

This random process of discovery is why such countries as Pakistan and Bangladesh with similar levels of development and competitiveness produce very different products (the former produces soccer balls while the other produces hats). Korea and Taiwan also offer the same lesson (one produces microwave ovens and hardly any bicycles unlike the other). For the entrepreneurs who first ventured into these markets and were protected from the free-riding copycats, huge profits were on offer.

Bailey Klinger and Daniel Lederman have shown that their measure of export diversification, the frequency a country introduces new products into its export mix, is directly related to the height of entry barriers. This is a stunning result since it goes against the prevailing consensus on efficient and well-functioning markets.

Rather than the Global Competitiveness Index cited in the first part of this piece, which is based on subjective surveys, Klinger and Lederman used the World Bank’s Doing Business indicators for measuring barriers to entry which are based on objective measures like the number of days for starting and closing a business. They found that the higher the cost, the greater the returns to innovation from self-discovery.

The barriers in effect performed the role of greenhouses, protecting fragile innovative start-ups from the harsh winds of the free market. This counter-intuitive conclusion robustly supported by the evidence is consistent with the market failure argument. It violates the prevailing theory that increased specialization for poor countries and lowering costs of doing business is the way they should attract investments.

This is also borne out by the development experience of Japan which used “administrative guidance” to encourage many players within emerging industries to consolidate into oligopolies, Korea which offered loan guarantees as a way to subsidize the discovery costs of large diversified business conglomerates, India with its licensing raj which allowed a few pioneering software companies to gain economies of scale without the fear of new entrants, and Brazil which sponsored competitions for innovation with significant exclusive licenses going to the winner.

Klinger and Lederman state that this does not imply that there are no negative effects due to protection. What their study shows is that the positive effects swamp them. This means that rather than justifying protectionism, what it does is build a case for state support for emerging industries. I will have more to say regarding this in a moment.

Moving on to the second form of market failure which is due to coordination costs, picture the island once again. To transport various coconut products to other parts of the area, investments in seafaring ships and the training of sailors are necessary. These complementary investments are needed for an expansion of production to occur. Unfortunately, no one is willing to coordinate with the other inhabitants who live near the shore who could profit from such activities, so nothing happens.

Taiwan’s experience with the orchid industry is illustrative. When the world price of sugar declined, the state figured that shifting farm production to this high end product would prove beneficial. This required coordinated investments in things like greenhouses and storage facilities which the state encouraged and subsidized. The same type of intervention was performed by Fundacion Chile a partly state-owned enterprise which gave rise to a new salmon exporting sector.

The faltering seaweed industry located mostly in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao and the nascent industry of coco juice seem to be suffering a combination of the market failure problems discussed above. Our electronics industry which is highly specialized in “screwdriver” assembly operations as South Korea once was could be expanded likewise to incorporate more value adding steps in the manufacturing process.

The usual ways by which governments address these market failures is by offering subsidies to defray the costs of “self-discovery” (by sponsoring contests which award a prize to the best solutions for example), financing high risk ventures at the pre-commercialization phase and coordinating complementary investments in specific areas such as research and development, infrastructure and general training.

Think of it this way: instead of borrowing from foreign governments to pay their suppliers to develop our infrastructure (think broadband and high-speed rail) we should be licensing their technologies and awarding these to local firms which can prove they can use it cost effectively to build what we need. This should also apply to contracts awarded to private firms partnered with foreign companies. They should be conditioned on meeting certain local content requirements. Defense contracts should increasingly source local producers as well.

The Department of Transportation and Communication is already on the right track by seeking to borrow to pay for the build while privatizing the operations and maintenance of certain projects like light railways. In time we could be exporting some of these products and services if we create local expertise. South Korea did this with its ship building industry in the 1970s with Hyundai Heavy Industries becoming the world’s leading exporter within a decade. It did this even as global demand for ships declined.

Where will the government get the money to do all this? From itself, by using the savings remitted by overseas Filipinos and stored with the central bank in the form of foreign currency reserves–an unorthodox view that even the “humbled” former dean of the UP Economics School holds! If the government were to set aside a third of the currency surplus flowing in each year (see previous posts on this) amounting to around fifteen billion dollars to fund these activities and assuming a one-for-one investment multiplier, a total of four hundred and fifty billion pesos worth of spending could be generated annually (adding 4.5% points to GDP growth!). This would fill up to eighty percent of the investment gap.

The need to diversify our exports is already apparent with an inordinately high specialization in electronics posing a huge risk to future growth in the face of uncertainty of demand from advanced economies. It is also clear that despite very benign inflation and low real interest rates, private firms fail to undertake investments that would lift the productivity of their idle capital. This underinvestment problem is why such a large proportion of our workforce remains unemployed or underutilized.

Stimulating demand for innovation and investment by addressing market failures should be the priority. The biggest barrier for the Philippines to adopting such a strategy will not be an inadequate bureaucracy as many of our top bureaucrats are well-informed and educated; it won’t be for lack of funds as a substantial amount of national savings remain untapped; it won’t be for lack of ideas as there is a wide gap between domestic and foreign technology that can be filled.

The biggest barrier will be attitudinal as it would mean countering the development mindset that has dominated for such a long time which is largely donor-driven. Having drunk the policy “cocktail” put together according to their orthodoxies to no avail, giving us the title of being “the sick man of Asia”, it is about time we developed our own recipes for stimulating economic dynamism in line with local conditions. I now leave you with a song about the coconut which should punctuate this final thought.

The coconut serves as a good analogy for our under investment problem.

The five year Philippine Development Plan (aka “the Plan”) released by the government of President Aquino earlier this year identifies a number of “structural defects” underpinning the country’s poor economic performance. Depicting the problem [...]]]> Tweet

The coconut serves as a good analogy for our under investment problem.

The five year Philippine Development Plan (aka “the Plan”) released by the government of President Aquino earlier this year identifies a number of “structural defects” underpinning the country’s poor economic performance. Depicting the problem was easy enough. Without a significant uptick in investments, inclusive growth will remain elusive and poverty will continue to hound us, so the Plan says.

Using an analogy inspired by Robinson Crusoe to grasp this, imagine living on an island where the only resource is the coconut and inhabitants keep arriving. The only way to feed a growing population is to plant more coconut trees. “Investing” in more trees requires hiring more laborers to climb them in order to harvest the coconut. Some coconuts could be consumed, while others could be traded for products from other islands.

The Philippines has lagged behind its Asian neighbors in investing, which explains why it is so poor. Exhibit A as provided by the Philippine Development Plan is reproduced here (see below). Since peaking at 25% in 1997, the country’s investment-to-GDP ratio has been steadily declining, underperforming Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. A familiar story for Philippine-watchers–we have all heard or read about this before.

Chart 1. Investment-to-GDP Ratios of Selected Asian Countries: 1994-2010 (in percent)

So what is the reason for this underinvestment? The answer given to us is a lack of competitiveness. The country’s lagging infrastructure, its poor governance and inadequate skill base are increasing the cost of doing business in the country. On the island for instance, a lack of tools to harvest coconuts, a lack of laborers with the skill at converting coconuts into useful products and a lack of boats to transport them offshore is the problem. Now what? Well, according to this narrative, massive infrastructure spending, improved governance and human capital development is warranted.

So beginning next year, the government will be bidding out four initial infrastructure projects amounting to twenty five billion pesos to improve infrastructure in the country. After a year of delays, the amount is about a quarter of what was originally slated. The projects include the construction and maintenance of three airports in Cebu, Bohol and Misamis Oriental and the ticketing system for Manila’s three light railways.

The government has also been busy this year fixing the internal procurement systems within the public works, agriculture and education departments. Much of the budgeted expenditures for this year was held back (a little over half of infrastructure budget as of September has not been spent) due to these efforts, but beginning next year, we are told, they should proceed much more smoothly. The DepEd also has a plan to close the gap in school buildings within the next five years mainly through build, lease transfer agreements with the private sector.

Assuming all these projects go ahead without further delay, we should expect the nation’s problems to be fixed in five years, right? Well, not exactly. One needs to get a sense of the scale of the problem first. This is why I did some very rough back-of-the-envelope calculations to determine the overall size of the employment and investment gaps. Using our island analogy it is like asking the question, how many coconut trees need to be planted to provide enough work for its growing number of inhabitants?

Climbing the coconut tree

Using data from 2005 to 2010, I tried to compute how much additional investments would be needed in the next five years to bring unemployment down from where it is currently at 7.4% to a more manageable level of say 4%. The country has about three million unemployed workers out of a total labor force of thirty-nine million in 2010. Each year about seven hundred thousand new entrants are added to this pool, which means a workforce of about forty-three million by 2016.

So for the country to produce jobs for all of these new entrants and reduce the pool of unemployed workers down to about 1.7 million consistent with an unemployment rate of 4% by 2016, about one million net new jobs need to be created each year. This is consistent with the government’s employment target. There is nothing new there.

The reason why we haven’t seen unemployment decline is because the number of net new jobs created each year is usually slightly below the number of new entrants (see Chart 2 below). Thus, the number of those unemployed steadily rises each year in proportion to the growing work force leaving the unemployment rate relatively stable at around 7.5%. The question now is how much additional investments have to be raised to bring this down to 4%.

Chart 2. Supply and Demand of New Jobs in the Philippines: 2006 to 2010

If one compares the average investments over the past five years of about one-and-a-half trillion pesos per year  (roughly 15% of GDP as shown in Chart 1–see preceding section) with the average number of net new jobs created of about seven hundred thousand per year, one arrives at a figure of about four hundred and fifty new jobs for every one billion pesos spent.

The number of jobs created per peso invested has actually been declining. Back in 1994, a billion pesos in today’s prices would produce about four times as many new jobs. This means that part of the problem has been the increase in productivity particularly in the manufacturing sector where technological progress has reduced the amount of workers required for any given level of output to be produced. In other words, new tools have been created that make climbing the coconut tree a lot easier. As a result, fewer workers are needed.

Assuming that the ratio of new jobs created per peso invested remains steady for the next five years, the amount of investments required to bring unemployment down is about two trillion pesos per year (20-25% of GDP, roughly where we were in the mid- to late-90s). Compared with the average amount of investment spending cited above, this would mean an increase of more than half a trillion pesos (close to six hundred billion) a year or an increase of about forty percent from the current base.

Had the government stuck to its original plan and rolled out a hundred billion pesos worth of projects and assuming an investment multiplier of two (which means a one-for-one additional investment in complementary projects amounting to two hundred billion in total), we would end up filling about a third of the required level of additional investments. Given its planned roll-out is now about a quarter of the original, we will only be achieving close to ten percent of the investment gap. In short, the “solution” does not seem anywhere near the required amount.

“The coconut nut is not a nut”

Here is another problem with the Plan: the assumption that improved competitiveness will steadily increase investments seems straight-forward, but reading the Global Competitiveness Report produced by the World Economic Forum, I find a few anomalies. The chart below shows the various country rankings from 2005 since the Report first came out until 2011 (click the play button).

The Competitiveness Index is a composite score made up of twelve components. These “twelve pillars” that hold up an economy cover things like institutions, macroeconomic policy, infrastructure, health, education, innovation and regulation. The Plan says that the “structural defects” in these pillars as shown by our declining ranking is the chief cause for our declining economy as measured by our investments-to-GDP ratio.

Our ranking has declined alright, but only because of the addition of more countries in the league table in the intervening years. Our score (which you can see by hovering the cursor over the appropriate column) on the competitiveness scale actually rose from 3.71 to 4.08 out of six during the period covered just above Indonesia’s score of 4.05 back in 2005.

Refering back to the first chart, it is clear that in 2008 when our score was actually 4.09, our investment-to-GDP ratio did not climb to anywhere near the level of Indonesia back in 2005. This is like saying two students who scored the same on their tests, did not receive the same final grade. There is an anomaly here.

One might argue that it is our ranking and not our score that counts, so that relative to our neighbors, our score continued to lag and that explains the poorer investment-to-GDP ratio. Makes sense if the grading of students is not based on their absolute scores, but on their relative rankings within the class, right?

Well then, according to that argument, Malaysia which ranked first among its neighbors in terms of competitiveness should have outperformed them in terms of its investments, but the first chart actually shows it slipping steadily below Indonesia and Thailand since 2002 and coming dangerously close to parity with the Philippines. In fact, Indonesia which has consistently come in third in the ratings and rankings of the four neighbors has steadily risen to outclass the Malaysian and Thai investment ratios by 2009 and 2010.

So perhaps, achieving “global competitiveness” is not what it is all “cracked up” to be. It would seem that some other dynamic is driving investments. As one song goes, “the coconut nut is not a nut.” This should give you a lot to think about, which gives me a few days to conclude this. Until then, let me leave you with this tune to fuel your ruminations…