Winning brains back to the Philippines
- Brain Drain -
By Federico M. Macaranas
AFTER posting its highest growth rate in more than three decades in 2007, the Philippine economy is poised to slow down in 2008 on account of external factors whose domestic impact its managers cannot fully tame. This should be less of a problem for those who are more long-term oriented and less swayed by medium-term political goals. After all, given the past economic reforms in banking and finance (capital adequacy ratios of commercial banks and the expanded value-added tax) among others, it is these long-term factors that really matter for sustained growth.
Yet short-term gains from the much-vaunted outsourcing bonanza that could result from the US slowdown, as corporations cut down costs, should be taken with much caution. Even the call for greater financial integration in the region espoused by the ADB should be tempered with a focus on the production of real goods and services — lest the economy be trapped forever in its low-level growth.
More fundamental than these financial factors is the need for the Philippines to align its economic growth with the path taken by dynamic Asia-Pacific countries and the developed world — a path that is based on innovation and technology. But more productive raw materials or chemicals, machinery or equipment, processing or marketing ideas do not grow out of trees. They come from people, educated men and women — be they peasants tutored in appropriate technologies rooted in indigenous practices or PhD’s able to translate scholarly learning into commercial ventures.
