in April despite headwinds

economic recession early this year as inflation swallowed up growth.

Data from Statista showed 9.3% of the total overseas Filipino workers deployed around the world in 2021 worked in Europe.

For 2023, the BSP forecast that cash remittances would expand by 3% on an annual basis.

Nicholas Antonio Mapa, senior economist at ING Bank in Manila, projects remittances to expand amid headwinds.

“Remittance growth to be sustained at roughly 3-4 percent for the rest of the year as OF deployment continues and global growth chugs along. This provides a stable source of fx while also delivering a source of peso consumption,” he said in a Viber message. Data broken down showed 41.3% of cash remittances came from the United States, followed by inflows from Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Japan, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Qatar, South Korea, and Taiwan. Remittances from land-based workers rose 4% on-year to $1.94 billion in April while money sent home by sea-based workers grew 2.7% on an annual basis to $550 million. (Ramon Royandoyan/ Philstar.com)

Running out of patience

OVER and over, Philippine authorities never seem to run out of reasons for ensuring that the Ninoy Aquino International Airport remains in the list of the world’s worst. Travelers have taken to issuing warnings about long weekends, when electricity at the NAIA tends to go haywire. Such an outage forced the shutdown not just of the country’s main gateway during the New Year’s Day 2023 holiday rush, but of the entire Philippine airspace.

This time, outbound travelers have complained of interminable waiting in line to clear immigration counters, at NAIA terminals with poor air conditioning. Officials of the Bureau of Immigration and its mother agency the Department of Justice have appealed for patience from the public, saying the long lines are the consequence of more thorough screening for potential victims of human trafficking.

Editorial

Travelers have been advised to arrive at the NAIA three hours prior to departure, to ensure that they don’t miss their flights. Social media has since been flooded with complaints from travelers, some of whom were offloaded as the government cracks down on human trafficking rings that are believed to enjoy the protection of certain Bureau of Immigration personnel.

Concerns about human trafficking are valid, with the victims mostly new entrants in the workforce who are educated enough to be recruited for jobs in the information and communications

Virtual Reality

PRESIDENT Ferdinand “Bongbong” Romualdez Marcos

Jr. has a bold foreign policy. And an even bolder economic policy. He has managed to balance relations with the United States and China. Both strategic powers are friends of the Philippines but BBM manages to keep China at bay without losing the latter’s economic support, cultural ties and friendship.

Bigger military presence will give China second thoughts from further making intrusions in the West Philippine Sea, outside of the six reefs and a rock Beijing has seized from the Philippine claims.

The six reefs are now virtual Chinese military bases. BBM’s answer to that threat: Allow U.S. troops in nine, possibly 11, bases in the Philippines.

In return, if any of Philippine troops, vessels and aircraft, and even its cyberspace, are attacked violently by China in the WPS, it will trigger a response from the U.S. It’s an technology as well as business process outsourcing sectors. As stories in the past months have shown, the victims were recruited through social media and promised jobs in IT or BPO companies, but instead ended up being forced to work in crypto currency scam operations mostly in Myanmar and Thailand. The victims were also reportedly forced to work long hours and beaten when they refused to cooperate. Protecting people from such traffickers is a noble undertaking, but there must be a way of pursuing this objective with efficiency and the least inconvenience for travelers. Authorities said they are moving to increase the number of immigration personnel at the NAIA counters. Some quarters have suggested that in the digital age, there can be pre-screening of anyone going overseas on a working visa, or who intends to stay out of the country for a period longer than the usual travel time of tourists, which is normally from a few days to two or three weeks.

BBM the Bold

ironclad guarantee. BBM has promised nirvana to Filipinos, short of delivering the moon itself. That nirvana could be triggered by the Maharlika Investment Corp. (MIC) whose Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) can bankroll any and all kinds of projects, investments and strategies with the end goal of prosperity for millions of Filipinos.

“We will strive to remove the unfreedoms. We will aim to feed the hungry, free the bound and banish poverty,” said President Marcos Jr. last June 12 at the Luneta.

“The Maharlika Investment Fund is the super power tool of development, a weapon of massive development,” asserts Albay Rep. Joey Salceda.

In a joint statement, the economic managers of President Marcos Jr. called the MIF or the MIC “the vehicle for economic growth.”

Each day, 95 children in the Philippines die from malnutrition. Twenty-seven out of 1,000 Filipino children do not get past their fifth birthday. A third of Filipino children are stunted, or short for their age.

Group. The PDEG is the lead unit in PNP operations against illegal drugs.

Stunting after two years of age can be permanent, irreversible and even fatal.

In the Philippines, 18.1 percent of the population lived below the national poverty line in 2021.

BBM aims to halve poverty incidence to 9 percent by the end of its term in June 2028. That means up to 12 million Filipinos will be rescued from poverty by the president. Instead of having 23.94 million Filipinos earning below $2 a day in 2021, we should have only 12 million Filipino poor – 9 percent of an expected population of 135.6 million by 2028.

Freedom from malnutrition, hunger and poverty is the ultimate emancipation. No president before Marcos Jr. had done it. Yet, he is promising it.

By freeing them from hunger, malnutrition and poverty, the president shall have given Filipinos the ultimate freedom – the freedom of choice. Free to choose their leaders, free to choose options to fight obstacles and adversities and free to live where they want to enjoy life’s blessings.

More than 12 million Filipinos live abroad, a remarkable tasked to fight the scourge.

The NAIA suffers enough from comparisons with the gateways of neighboring countries; this part of Asia happens to have some of the world’s diaspora of the unrich and the unfree, victims of unfreedoms.

A third of 24 million households in the Philippines have single parents. The other parent is gone, abroad, because he or she has no freedom of choice in the Philippines, to choose a decent, well-paying job, to choose the food they want to eat, to choose the education their children must have and to choose a lifestyle that is comfortable, safe and secure. “We have laid down the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) for the next six years. We will implement such with vigor and with consistency,” BBM promised at Luneta.

With remarkable bravado, Marcos Jr. vowed: “I have said it before, I shall say it once more: I will be with you on that long and uphill road to achieve our dream of freedom – freedom from hunger, freedom from neglect, freedom from fear.”

PDP’s goals are: top-rated international airports. Waiting for hours just to clear immigration is unconscionable. (Philstar.com)

• Maintain annual economic growth rate between 6.0 to 7.0 percent in 2023 and between 6.5 to 8.0 percent from 2024 to 2028.

• Create more, better and more resilient jobs. By 2028, the unemployment rate shall be within 4.0 to 5.0 percent.

• Keep food and overall prices low and stable. Food and overall inflation will be kept to within 2.5 to 4.5 percent in 2023 and within 2.0 to 4.0 percent from 2024 to 2028.

• Transform the production sectors through innovation. The Philippines aims to be in the top 33 percent of the Global Competitiveness Index by 2028.

Salceda says PDP’s main development goals are achievable or do-able. “The Maharlika Investment Fund is the super power tool of development, a weapon of massive development,” he asserts.

He reckons that with just P44 billion of start-up fund, the MIF can parlay up to P7 trillion of investment funds after the MIF goes public.

That money is enough to buy or build energy assets –generation plants, transmission systems, retail outlets to help reduce the electricity shortage; other assets that can remedy many of the shortages afflicting the country today and production assets that can make the Philippines again an export powerhouse.

Philippine electricity is the costliest in the world. Power is 20 percent of production cost. Labor adds another 15 percent.

Because of the severe energy shortage after then President Corazon Aquino mothballed the $2-billion 1,200-megwatt Bataan nuclear plant, the Philippines missed three major waves of foreign investments that flowed into Southeast Asia in the last 30 years. The Philippines has been left behind in development by its ASEAN neighbors. Til 1970, Philippine exports, at $300 million year, were ten times those of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Philippine foreign reserves, at $230 million in 1970-1973, were more than that of China, $70 million; Korea $80 million; Thailand $80 million; Malaysia $180 million and Indonesia $170 million. Only Singapore was bigger, $360 million. Today. China has $3.4 trillion reserves, South Korea $423 billion, Singapore $289 billion, Thailand $225 billion, Indonesia $140 billion, Malaysia $114 billion and the Philippines, $101 billion. (Philstar.com)

* * *

The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Asian Journal, its management, editorial board and staff.

* * *

Email: biznewsasia@gmail.com

GIVE him an A for consistency: Rodrigo Duterte’s kill, kill, kill mantra is unchanged even in his retirement. His murderous thoughts this time are directed against law enforcers involved in drug trafficking. His advice? “Shoot them dead. Why allow them due process? What for?”

He sees no “redeeming factor” for such dirty cops, he said; they don’t deserve to undergo court proceedings to establish guilt or innocence.

Duterte made the remarks a day before the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) announced that it had filed criminal charges for drug offenses, graft, obstruction of justice, perjury and malversation of public property against 50 members of the Philippine National Police in connection with the seizure of 990 kilos of shabu in Tondo, Manila.

The 50 are led by former PNP operations chief Lt. Gen. Benjamin Santos and Brig. Gen. Narciso Domingo, former head of the PNP Drug Enforcement

Both generals have denied involvement in the alleged drug trafficking activities of Rodolfo Mayo Jr., in whose office warehouse in Tondo the 990 kilos of shabu were found during a PDEG raid in October last year.

Mayo, a police master sergeant at the time, was apprehended by the PDEG raiding team, but subsequently freed. Domingo explained that this was to allow Mayo to lead the PNP to the source of such a massive amount of shabu.

The DILG didn’t buy the story, especially after 42 kilos of the shabu were reportedly pilfered by the police. The shabu was returned after video footage surfaced, showing the pilferage.

* * *

Without the incriminating video, including one that showed Mayo being allowed to go free, those 42 kilos could have made their way to the streets. The pilferage would have earned a fortune for the so-called “ninja cops” who “recycle” confiscated drugs.

Drug money is big, big money.

The allure of drug dealing can be irresistible to those who are

With the massive profits to be made, you can see why a master sergeant can afford a warehouse office in Tondo. This Manila district is chock-full of informal settlers, but real estate prices are among the steepest in the country in highly commercial Tondo.

Even the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency – by law the lead agency in the national campaign against illegal drugs – has its rotten eggs. Last December, the National Capital Region Police Office raided the South District Office of the PDEA in Upper Bicutan in Taguig. Those arrested were led by the PDEA district office chief himself, Enrique Lucero. Incidentally, that raid was staged about two months after the PDEA arrested Juanito Jose Remulla III, eldest son of Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla in a controlled delivery of 900 grams of kush from the US, at his house in Las Piñas on Oct. 11. The younger Remulla was acquitted on grounds of reasonable doubt by the Las Piñas Regional Trial Court on Jan. 6, after a record 84 days from filing of the case.

Secretary Remulla has come under fire from Duterte supporters on several issues, from the campaign against drugs to the murder cases filed by state prosecutors against corrections chief Gerald Bantag and Negros Oriental 3rd District Rep. Arnolfo Teves Jr. * * *

In Davao City on Monday, June 12, Duterte lamented in his radio program that the country now has a “fractured” police force, where members themselves have organized drug trafficking rings.

It wasn’t clear if Duterte thought this rot has been a bane in the PNP for a long time, or if it happened only in the past year, as his successor overturned his hardline approach to the drug menace.

But his former PNP chief, Sen. Ronald dela Rosa, said police pilferage and recycling of illegal drugs have been going on for many years now.

Duterte said it is tough to catch and prosecute cops involved in drugs, so it is better to just kill them.

At the start of his presidency, Duterte had explained to The STAR the difficulty of pinning down notorious drug traffickers, who know enough not to have illegal drugs in their possession and, in case of capture, have enormous funds to pay off everyone at every step of the criminal justice system.

Senator Bato, by most accounts the architect of Oplan Tokhang, chuckled at Duterte’s admonition to just kill rotten cops.

“Hindi yan puede,” Dela Rosa told “The Chiefs” on Cignal TV’s One News last Wednesday.

“You know the president, out of frustration, nasasabi niya yan.”

Dela Rosa said even dirty cops deserve due process.

* * *

Dela Rosa declined to make suggestions on how the Marcos 2.0 administration should wage the campaign against illegal drugs. But he noted that with Duterte no longer president, drug dealers, including dirty cops, have become emboldened: “They are coming back with a vengeance.” If such cops shouldn’t be killed outright, how can the PNP be cleansed of the drug dealers in its midst?

Dela Rosa suggests strangling them tightly – “sakalin mo nang husto” – not literally, but by imposing a one-strike policy, for example. He said a major drug bust by the PDEG or PDEA should lead to the relief of the police officer/s with jurisdiction over the crime scene. It must be made crystal clear to cops, Dela Rosa said, that their jobs are on the line in the anti-drug campaign.

The problem, as we have seen, is if PDEG or PDEA members themselves are the ones involved in drug deals.

This sorry state of affairs partly gave Duterte’s draconian approach a measure of public support during his presidency.

Even Dela Rosa, despite his platitudes about due process, surely sees Duterte’s point. In fighting the drug scourge, the PNP’s model, Dela Rosa told us, shouldn’t be slick James Bond but Rambo.

Hindi puede disente approach. Hindi puede ang pa-cute-cute,” Dela Rosa said. Marcos 2.0 officials will probably say they’re not going for cute, but simply prefer a different approach.

Suspects are still being shot dead in drug stings, ostensibly after fighting back. But in general, this is an administration that’s more likely to legalize marijuana than to impose the death penalty, whether by legislation or through extrajudicial means, on cannabis traffickers.

It has five more years to show that its approach is better. (Philstar.com)

* * *

The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Asian Journal, its management, editorial board and staff.