Left behind in ASEAN

“We never overtook you,” my Thai friend once told me, when I told her how far the Philippines has been left behind by Thailand, Malaysia and perhaps even Vietnam. “Your neighbors did not overtake you,” she insisted. “Your leaders held you back.”

That meme circulating on social media attributed to Gideon Lasco captures the essence of the Philippine tragedy. No one can feel sadder about this horrible state of Philippine affairs than those in my generation. Back in 1969, I was in a delegation organized by the UP Student Council to visit universities in ASEAN. Truth be told, we were way ahead of all the ASEAN countries we visited. Never were we so proud to be Filipinos then.

Then in the early 80s, I joined an official delegation from the Ministry of Energy for a conference in Kuala Lumpur. I was so shocked that KL had overtaken Metro Manila in terms of development. The same was true of Singapore. What happened? They simply left us behind. The decade of martial law clearly caused a terrible decline in our country’s economic development. Our public infrastructure remained third world compared to Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

The difference? Singapore had Lee Kuan Yew, Malaysia had Mahathir and we had Ferdinand Marcos. The problem is, even after the dictatorship ended, the succeeding Philippine presidents, except FVR, did nothing much to catch up. So, here we are, where we are. And at the rate our politicians are robbing the country blind, our future generations will be the most pitiable in the region.

What happened? We kept electing bad leaders who neglected basics like building necessary modern infrastructure. What little they built is substandard because corruption reduced the amount needed to complete infrastructure to world – class quality.

The worst thing is, they kept borrowing supposedly to build what we needed but mostly, our borrowed funds enriched politicians who used their ill-gotten wealth to entrench their families in power. This state of affairs is not ending soon from the looks of it. Our people seem to be just too dumb or too dependent on our corrupt politicians to want meaningful change.

I found an article written by Ben Diokno when he was Duterte’s budget secretary. It captured the problem we have because of inadequate infrastructure. Ben was the chief propagandist of the Build Build Build program of Duterte which unfortunately didn’t deliver on the promises in the end.

Here is how Diokno saw our infrastructure problem as it relates to economic growth.

“However, the bullish outlook on the Philippine market can only be sustained if a binding constraint is addressed: its poor and collapsing infrastructure.

“The Philippines’ infrastructure indicators consistently result in dismal scores that pull down its overall competitiveness. For overall infrastructure, we lag behind our ASEAN-5 neighbors, especially Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. What is worrisome is that our overall infrastructure ranking has steeply declined from 94th in 2009 to 112th in 2017.

“Next, our road infrastructure has also performed poorly, being the worst among the ASEAN-5 countries. We started out at 94th in 2009, declining to 106th in 2017. This is in contrast to Indonesia that has improved significantly from 105th in 2009 to 75th in 2017.

“Rail infrastructure tells a similar story. Despite having one of the first rail systems among the ASEAN member countries, the Philippines has not been able to sustain its pioneering ways. The World Economic Forum (WEF) rankings show that our rail infrastructure is the worst among the ASEAN-5, stagnating from 85th in 2009 to 89th in 2017.

“The Philippines failed to invest in infrastructure, and this tragic blunder has led to economic and social costs to Filipinos. According to a study by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 2014, if the traffic situation in Metro Manila… is not alleviated, the cost will climb up from P2.4 billion daily to as much as P6 billion daily by 2030…

“The Philippines’ standing in the Global Competitiveness Rankings of the World Economic Forum (WEF) gives another reason to urgently upgrade the infrastructure of the country…

“A quick glance at Gross Capital Formation as a share of GDP, courtesy of World Bank data, confirms this observation. From the mid-80s to the 90s, gross capital formation as percent of GDP of our ASEAN-5 neighbors annually exceeded that of the Philippines by about 50 to 200 percent. The gap has somehow narrowed in recent years, but is still noticeable nonetheless.

“Low public spending on infrastructure development has exacerbated this issue. From 2010 to 2016, government spending on infrastructure as a percentage of GDP averaged a measly 2.9 percent.

“For a country whose Achilles’ heel is infrastructure development, this level is unacceptable…”

Here is Vietnam, a country at war when we did our ASEAN tour and not yet part of ASEAN. It has overtaken us and according to Teneo, a US consultancy, it is now planning to build a $67-billion high speed railway to connect Hanoi with Ho Chi Minh City without foreign funding. It would run at a top speed of roughly 350km per hour over an estimated 957 mi (1,541km) with 23 passenger stations and five freight stops. The target construction start date is 2027 with completion set for 2035.

According to the Vietnamese transport ministry, they decided in the spirit of “independence and self-reliance,” funding for the project will be sourced from the national budget, contributions from local governments and government-issued bonds, since “borrowing from any country often comes with strings attached.” Some media reports also state that Vietnam wants to develop its own technology for high-speed rail.

We probably could do the same if all the money in the Treasury were used properly and not to build a gaudy P30-billion Senate building and finance atrociously priced “safe houses” by the vice president who has no business using safe houses. Oh well…

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