Rabbit year

The malls in Singapore are preparing for the Chinese New Year as red t-shirts with rabbit images compete with Santa Claus.

Chinese people everywhere are welcoming the Year of the Water Rabbit, starting from Jan. 22nd, 2023 (Chinese New Year). The sign of the rabbit is a symbol of longevity, peace, and prosperity in Chinese culture.

There is also excitement in Singapore that the Chinese New Year festivities will make a full physical comeback after over two years of COVID restrictions. There are plans for street light up, food fairs, stage shows and countdown parties.

The Chinese believe the rabbit is the luckiest sign in the Zodiac system. Business people are advised to invest.

But there are also predictions of natural disasters. The weather might go crazy in the Year of the Rabbit, bringing floods, tornadoes or droughts to some countries. Not surprising with weather pattern changes happening in the world today.

Rabbits have been considered a symbol of fortune for over 2,000 years even in other cultures. For example, a rabbit’s foot has historically been considered a lucky token.

Rabbits are also known to be prolific procreators, and are also an ancient symbol of fertility and life.

In Singapore during the last rabbit year in 2011, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong urged Singaporeans to have more babies. He said that additional children would bring more joy to families.

The current birth rate for Singapore in 2022 is 8.419 births per 1000 people, a 0.98 percent decline from 2021. The birth rate for Singapore in 2021 was 8.502 births per 1000 people, a 0.96 percent decline from 2020.

The Lunar New Year of the Water Rabbit 2023 starts on Jan. 22, with the first New Moon following the winter solstice, and ends on Feb. 9 of 2024, when the Dragon Year enters.

Well… back home, we can only hope for a better new year. Philippine economic growth is projected to weaken in 2023 as the global economic environment deteriorates.

This was according to a recent study published by state think tank Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS). The study estimated the gross domestic product (GDP) growing “by about 7.1 percent in 2022, which is within the government’s target of 6.5 to 7.5 percent.

“However, the GDP is projected to decelerate to 4.5 to 5.5 percent in 2023 due to the ‘gloomy and uncertain’ outlook for the world economy. This is below the 6.5 percent target that the current administration set for 2023.”

This year saw us living in interesting times. The national election tore our country apart. Big problems are confronting us, many from the past, and we are hoping we have what it takes to finally address long festering issues.

Marcos Junior gave us hope he is out to redeem his family’s reputation. His first few weeks in office provide reasons for hope. His Cabinet appointments, except for a few, show he will be an improvement over Duterte.

His economic managers were well accepted by the business sector. But it didn’t take long to see his relative inexperience. The sugar importation question showed a serious vulnerability.

He was reported to have agreed to a recommendation of his de facto agriculture chief to import some 300,000 tons of sugar to alleviate a shortage that doubled the retail prices of sugar to over P100 a kilo.

But Junior quickly changed his course after a call of Senate President Migz Zubiri, who is a known representative of local sugar interests. Last week, he reversed himself again by ordering additional imports as retail prices remained high and a contributor to food inflation. But it is too little and too late.

“If they only allowed entry of 300,000 MT as recommended by former Usec Sebastian, it would have dampened sugar prices. Imports would start coming in October lasting till December. Now the additional approved import will arrive 60 days after, beginning end of February. It will therefore not reduce sugar prices,” a former agriculture official lamented.

There is growing fear that Junior’s technocrat economic managers will turn out like Marcos Senior’s. Having seen former senior undersecretary Sebastian’s fate and the loyalty check on Maharlika, the technocrats seem reluctant to steer Junior in the right direction.

The first six months has turned out to be an OJT experience for Junior. The new year should enable us to see if he has what it takes to lead us.

Problems in food security can only grow worse this year. Junior must do extraordinary measures like fixing agrarian reform if he wants greater productivity not just in rice but other high value crops.

Expect brownouts in 2023. The energy industry is expecting 2023 to be more challenging than 2022. The tight power supply in Luzon and Visayas will be exacerbated by even higher demand as the economy further recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier, the Department of Energy (DOE) also estimated that there would be 17 yellow alerts and three red alerts next year.

There won’t be enough money for infrastructure in the Treasury. Junior must make PPP truly attractive for the private sector to be interested.

COVID isn’t over. Epidemic or endemic, it will test our rickety health infrastructure. Let’s act quickly on the bivalent vaccines.

We need a good health secretary who must modernize health delivery. An unhealthy population cannot be expected to be economically productive.

Then there is education. There is a meme going around placing the Philippines at the absolute bottom of ASEAN countries in terms of IQ.

Our pupils missed two years of in-school learning thanks to COVID. But even before COVID, we are already at the bottom of a list of countries in reading and math.

And our economy is now more import dependent than ever, even for food. Not a good sign for our future generations.

Our consumer-driven economy will fast lose its purchasing power with so many untrained workers. There will be no demographic dividend. Even if we have a good-sized working age population, bad education and poor health will deny them purchasing power.

None of these can be solved by Junior during his term. But he must start the radical change needed to do so.

Happy New Year everyone!

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco