Buy Pinoy, or bye-bye Pinas

Juan de la Cruz starts the day early, having set his alarm clock (made in China) for 6 a.m. As coffee perks in the pot (made in Pakistan), he whirrs his electric razor (made in Hong Kong). He puts on a shirt (Sri Lanka), designer jeans (Thailand) and tennis shoes (Malaysia). After cooking breakfast in his skillet (India), he sits down with his calculator (Mexico) to see how much he can spend for the day. He sets his wristwatch (Taiwan) to the radio (Vietnam), then hops into his car (Korea) to continue searching for a good-paying job. At the end of yet another fruitless day, Juan decides to relax for a while. He puts on his sandals (Brazil), pours himself a bottle of wine (Australia), turns on the TV (Indonesia), and wonders why he just can’t find a job in the Philippines.

That came from the Internet, accessed by my Mac, made in Singapore.

If landing a job is tough, holding it down is even tougher in certain industries. Thousands of Filipinos got laid off from garment factories last year. Already choked by competition from neighboring countries, exports had dipped as the US sank into recession. The 9/11 attacks made it worse as US malls cancelled orders from China and Indonesia. Ships laden with shirts, denims and underwear plowed their way back across the Pacific and dumped their cargo on RP. Filipinos didn’t have much to spend last year, as they were still recovering from the economic rut of Estrada rule. But they spent their meager budgets on the cheaper goods from Indonesia and China-or in ukay-ukay of used clothes from the US. Filipino garment-makers lost out; dozens closed shop. Banks lost clients and sought to keep profits through higher interest rates on new borrowers. They got no takers.

Industrialists and traders decided they had to reverse the downward spiral. Picking up from Korea, they launched a Buy-Pinoy movement to entice consumers to spend more on RP-made goods-for their own good.

The movement isn’t exactly new. Businessmen and politicians had advocated similar buying spurts in the ’50s to the ’70s. Buy-Filipino was a slogan to get consumers to patronize their own in lieu of imports that only enriched foreigners, aside from draining dollar reserves.

Globalization has posed a variation. Hardly any product nowadays is of purely Filipino ingredients. Out-sourcing is proving that certain raw materials indeed are better and cheaper from abroad. "Buy-Pinoy," says president Sergio Ortiz-Luis of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, "now means buying products not just made in the Philippines but also using Philippine ingredients." Adds Richard Tiu of the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry: "Buy-Pinoy also means increasing your budget for products that use our raw materials. If for every P100, you used to spend P20 on such goods, make it P30. With its impact on trade volume, and we’re talking hundreds of billions of pesos, a P10-increase by every Filipino would mean thousands of new steady jobs."

Also noticeable in the revived movement of the 21st century are its leaders, as shown in Tiu’s surname. Buy-Pinoy was initiated this time not by aging Spanish-speaking industrialists but by young Chinoys who are heading more and more businesses. "Our parents were born in China, their relatives there tie them to the mainland," Tiu explains. "Our generation was born in the Philippines. All the friends and relatives we know are here. This is our country. Naturally, we lay our bets on it."

Convincing Pinoys to buy-Pinoy seems easy. Everybody is expected to know that it makes sense. Koreans in Manila frequent Korean shops for their spices even if kimchi is made everywhere, or cluster in Korean resorts in Boracay although there are cheaper ones. They help their countrymen, who in turn order from the homeland where their patronage keep Koreans employed. Buying Pinoy would be no different.

But that’s easier said than done in situations where buying Pinoy means buying more expensive goods. "In such cases, Ortiz-Luis and Tiu chorus, "go for quality. You’ll find out that in most cases, such as apparel, buying Pinoy means better designs and durable materials.

Buy-Pinoy movers know they’re up against the Pinoy’s deep-rooted colonial mentality. Four-hundred years under Spain, 40 years of America and four years with the Rising Sun have made Filipinos think that goods made in Europe, US or Japan are always far better. Aleli Pansacola, who’s a movement of her own, has been trying to dispel that notion for years. A maker of bath and laundry soap made of natural and Filipino ingredients, Pansacola compares her Dailah line with imported ones. Most detergents contain hard alkyl benzene, a synthetic chemical that makes more suds but is nonbiodegradable; that is, it doesn’t dissolve into basic substances, and thus chokes rivers and lakes into which the wash water run. Pansacola laments the advertising that makes people believe that more suds means cleaner laundry. It’s the cleansing agents that do the job. And she cites her use of natural oils extracted from coconut, herbs and fruits that she plants in Pila and Victoria, Laguna.

Poor technology also works against buying Pinoy. Filipino stores in America sell stuff made in Thailand, though with Tagalog brandnames, simply because they’re packaged better. Ironically, these include uniquely Pinoy items like patis or bagoong that, prepared by Thais, have longer shelf life. Fil-Ams are also painfully aware of the preferences of the folks back home. So when they buy clothes to send home from bargain outlets, they avoid those with the label "made in the Philippines," but pick out ones from Bangladesh or Equador. Yet it’s of the same design and fabric.

In the end, Buy-Pinoy leaders will have to educate consumers more on product awareness. With it can come product patriotism. (After 9/11, Americans bought up US flags by the dozen in a show of solidarity-until they found out the fabrics were made in China.) They’re a long way off. But they acknowledge that the government is giving them the opportunity to get their message across. The long holidays that Malacañang frequently declares, for one, affords Filipinos a chance to travel to their hometowns and buy the local wares. Such domestic spending somehow saved the day for RP. While Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand slid into negative growth last year, RP surged with 3.5 percent GNP. Without it, Pinas would have said bye-bye.

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So now it’s clear. Joseph Estrada isn’t planning to defend himself in his plunder case. He doesn’t intend to fly to the US for knee surgery. He just wants to live in exile to avoid trial, period.

To do so, he induced 19 senators and 136 congressmen to let him go on humanitarian grounds, which the public rejected. He then dismissed his lawyers to gain public sympathy, but which only backfired. Now his political gofers are trying to scare Malacañang and the Supreme Court into setting him free, or else face another uprising of the poor. Too bad for them, the only rumbling is in their empty threats. Even in the remote chance of civil strife, the only beneficiary would be a narcopolitician who’s trying to escape prosecution.

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Catch Linawin Natin, tonight at 11:30 on IBC-13. PNP Dep. Dir. Gen. Hermogenes Ebdane and The STAR columnist Wilson Lee Flores will discuss the scourge of kidnappings for ransom.

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