Stagnant

So this is how a nation dies.

The numbers may seem unrelated. But they are stark.

We have the worst performing stock exchange as well as the worst performing currency in the region. Both are barometers of confidence in the country’s immediate prospects.

Our stock market, in particular, has fallen to the depths it has fallen when the pandemic was raging. We never fully recovered and now we are in the doldrums.

We have the worst performing tourism industry in the ASEAN. The sector is managed by incompetents who never adjusted policy and strategy to keep up with the competition. Now we are caught up in the geopolitics of the trade and will not manage to grow this industry into the foreseeable future.

In the third quarter, the economy’s growth dropped to just four percent from 5.5 percent in the quarter preceding. No one expected such a massive collapse. To the last moment, trained analysts were predicting about a full percentage point higher growth. So much for being a growth leader in this part of the world.

Foreign direct investment flows into our economy dropped by over 40 percent. Business expansion projects are being shelved everywhere. No one is betting on a strong Philippine rebound.

Our agriculture has long been a dead spot. Instead of building up productivity and improving on efficiency, government policy is entirely focused on price interventions that is further killing the sector. Increasingly dependent on food importation, our economy is less and less able to feed its own people.

Food importation aggravates pressure on our foreign currency reserves. This further weakens our currency. This is not offset by agriculture exports. Our main agricultural export remains coconut oil. With neighboring countries like Malaysia and Thailand winning tariff concessions from the Trump administration, we are likely to lose out in the competition.

Philippine exports to the US have been slapped 19 percent tariffs. Our neighboring economies recently won tariff-free access to the US market. The tariff differential will be telling in the coming months. So much for our President being a “strong negotiator.”

As our economic expansion slows dramatically, our propensity to incur debt continues to rise. This will bring us closer to a debt crisis. The whole point of adept fiscal management is to grow the domestic economy faster than we grow our indebtedness. The reverse is happening.

With growth slowing down and debt piling up to fund food subsidies, it will cost us more to refinance our borrowings. A major downgrade in our credit risk rating will be devastating.

Trying to fight an economic slowdown, our monetary authorities will likely push to cut interest rates further. The first implication of doing so is a sharper slide in the peso’s exchange value.

The last time we cut interest rates, bank lending contracted rather than expanded. This is a bad sign. Confidence in the domestic economy has evaporated.

The latest numbers indicate that functional literacy among our people worsened dramatically the past few years. Our education system not only fails to raise the skills of our workers. It has undermined the skills we need to thrive in a competitive world.

Our people are not only losing in literacy. Infant and child malnutrition is cutting off the next generation from even being functional. Food inflation is worsening the numbers for involuntary hunger.

When the Philippine economy exhibited the same unhealthy signs we see now, a great diaspora happened. Millions simply picked up and left. Most of them, best qualified, have not returned. We have lost human capital immeasurably.

With all the adverse numbers we now see, we can expect a strong wave of migration to happen. When a country becomes unable to support its population, the population leaves.

Everywhere we look, we see signs of a gathering economic storm. Yet our people appear too exhausted to even protest the bad governance that brought us to this point. A serious crisis is brewing and yet no one wants to acknowledge it.

The latest surveys indicate that President Bongbong Marcos’ job approval ratings have dropped to 18 percent. Less than one in five Filipinos continue to have confidence in his ability to lead the nation out of this crisis.

Marcos’ polling numbers are far worse than the numbers being posted by Donald Trump. For all his blunders, lying and possibly criminal acts, the US president continues to have the support of about a third of Americans.

What Marcos’ numbers tell us is that, halfway through his term, the Filipino leader has expended all of his political capital. Without political capital, it is unlikely that he will be able to rally his people and decisively confront the crisis that now cripples the nation.

And he is not trying too hard either.

Deep in a corruption scandal, he has yet to offer a roadmap out of the stagnation we are suffering. He has not offered a menu of policy reforms to make governance better. He takes no new initiative in reviving business confidence and get things going again.

How long can he keep doing nothing?

To buy popularity, he offered all sorts of discounts for rail commuters. The result is a loss for the company that manages the LRT-1.

In a mad scramble to shore up public support, he is bound to offer quick-fixes that compound the economic crisis.