The party’s over too soon

No. I am not talking about the aborted ASEAN fiesta that was supposed to firmly put Cebu in the international tourism map. The cancellation certainly damaged Cebu’s and the country’s image. Nobody really believes it was the typhoon that aborted it. But it looks like there’s real rough weather to rain on Ate Glue’s parade. Her administration’s claims of economic gains seem all too short-lived, if at all.

On the external side, the American economy is keeping economists arguing whether it is on the way down or about to turn around. Since the world depends on the American economy as the engine driving up demand, any downturn next year should be bad news all around. If the Americans catch a bad cold, we’d be having convulsions with flu.

In fact, we are starting to feel a little under the weather already. Consumer confidence in the fourth quarter declined, according to the Bangko Sentral, due to uncertainty about the country’s economic condition as well as families’ income prospects and financial situation. The BSP’s latest Consumer Expectations Survey (CES) showed consumer confidence index declining by 2.4 points to minus 39.8 percent for the fourth quarter, especially in Metro Manila. The survey was conducted from Oct. 2 to 7 among 3,028 households.

Respondents from the low income groups, particularly those with monthly incomes of less than P30,000, were particularly bearish about fourth quarter prospects. Respondents from the higher income groups were more bullish, with their confidence index improving 14 points to minus 43.1 percent, but still in negative territory.

Even the usually upbeat Donald Dee of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) was not optimistic. He doubts manufacturing activities would significantly contribute to the domestic product (GDP) growth needed to meet the low end of government’s annual growth target of 5.5 percent to 6.1 percent. He told Business Mirror he expects demand to remain lukewarm in spite of expectations of higher household consumption in the holiday season.

Third-quarter GDP expanded an unexpected 4.8 percent, way below the government’s earlier forecast of between 5.2 percent and 5.8 percent.

The nine-month GDP growth average was at 5.4 percent from 4.8 percent last year. "What we saw in the third quarter… tepid manufacturing output, is still the same in the fourth quarter. Even the Christmas demand, I think, is not there," Dee told Business Mirror.

Gross value added for manufacturing activities, which accounts for about 25 percent of the total national output, slowed down to 4.8 percent in the third quarter from 5.7 percent in the same period last year. "I have always said it would be difficult for us because of the certain stumbling blocks like the high cost of labor, lack of infrastructure and the [high] cost of doing business," Dee said.

So it seems the hurrahs from Ate Glue’s chief economic apologist, Romy Neri are short-lived. In fact, a respected economist who also once held Neri’s position said economic growth may have been lower than the almost five percent recorded by the National Government.

Felipe Medalla of the Foundation for Economic Freedom said in a recent conference that "economic growth may have been lower than indicated by the gross domestic product (GDP) statistics." This, he said is suggested by the three percentage points discrepancy between the growth rate and the population’s ability to buy basic goods.

According to Medalla, for the first two quarters of the year, the government indicated a five-percent to six-percent growth in the economy. However, the people’s purchasing power had only grown by three percent. Purchasing power is the amount money can buy while the GDP of a country is defined as the market value of all final goods and services produced within it in a given period of time.

"Probably the country is not really growing five to six percent… GDP numbers can actually be worse," the economist said. While he was quick to note that the discrepancy should not be taken as an attempt to mislead the public, the fact remains that the economy is less robust than Ate Glue claims it to be.

And with the focus of our leaders now on cha cha, next year can probably be written off as another year wasted to our senseless politics. Just as we are about to join the party our neighbors have been enjoying for years, it’s over for us all too soon. And it’s our fault.

The Internet

I often wonder how I managed to survive before the Internet. As a journalism student, I remember once accompanying my professor, Amando Doronila to the telegraph office so he could file his story for a foreign publication he was writing for. They had to punch his story on a tape before it could be sent abroad.

In the early 90s, while I was attending a conference abroad, I had to type my story on a regular typewriter so the business center can fax it to my newspaper in Manila. These days, I did everything on my laptop in the comfort of my hotel room, which also normally had WiFi or some sort of Internet access I could plug my laptop to. Everything is so easy now.

Then again, the Internet can also be a pain in the neck. I used to spend at least 15 minutes each morning ridding my mailbox of junk mail. This was precisely why I stopped using the mailbox provided by my local Internet provider. Now, I only use online email providers like gmail, yahoo and hotmail. They have excellent junk mail filters and it only takes a few seconds to send all the junk mail into cyber limbo.

This is why I am bothered and amused that an email supposedly from me is now going around spreading some computer virus. I checked my computer and it is virus free. It appears, my bayantel e-mail address had been spoofed. It even has for subject, the titillating come-on of "Sexy" and a few of my oversexed friends have opened it, thinking I was passing on one of Dr. Ernie E’s lively cartoons. Sorry about your computer catching that virus, Lito G, ’twas your libido that got you.

Well… if any of you folks get such a mail supposedly from me from an email address other than the online mail providers, junk it immediately. Spoofed spam is the worse there is on the Internet and we all have to be savvy enough to know one when we see one.

Speaking of the Internet, the suspension of Inquirer Cocktales columnist Vic Agustin, apparently from that water pouring incident at the cha cha press conference last Saturday (Vic violated the cardinal rule in journalism that one should cover the news and not become part of it), is not totally unwelcome for Vic. He could have just as well exclaimed, "Make my day!" when the suspension order was made. For some time now, Vic had been raring to test a plan to just write an online column and make as much, if not more money for himself.

Vic is banking on the general worldwide trend in favor of websites. And where the readers are, so are the advertisers. At The New York Times, for example, the number of people who read the paper online now surpasses the number who buys the print edition. Are people drifting away from news?

Not really. What people are drifting away from is paying for news, according to Eli Noam, a professor of finance and economics at Columbia University and director of its Columbia Institute for Tele-Information. "And that will be hard to reverse… It’s happened to music, and now it is beginning to happen to newspapers. Yes, the technology will create many new tiny news media."

Vic’s problem however is that the Philippines is about a number of years behind such trends. On the upside, is the growing Global Pinoy community who are hungry for news from the homeland. Even with just Google ads, it may be possible to earn a few thousand dollars on a website featuring Philippine business and high society gossip.

It will be interesting to see if cocktales.com.ph <http://cocktales.com.ph> or cocktales.biz <http://cocktales.biz> as an online solo can sustain Vic, if he finally decides to break with Inquirer, which seems inevitable. The final measure of success will have to be in financial terms. In a sense, Vic is a pioneer. If Vic was in the US, writing for an American audience, he probably could earn a decent living writing for a website like the Drudge Report. Let’s see if it could happen here too.

Believer

Here’s Dr. Ernie E.

A young lady came home from a date looking rather sad. She told her mother, "Arthur proposed to me an hour ago."

"Then why are you so sad?" her mother asked.

"Because he also told me he is an atheist. Mom, he doesn’t even believe there’s a hell."

Her mother replied, "Marry him anyway. Between the two of us, we’ll show him how wrong he is."

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]