EDITORIAL – Wake-up call

We don’t need anyone to tell us how much the nation has slipped in international competitiveness. We just have to look around us and see how much we have lagged behind our neighbors. Before the Asian financial crisis in 1997 our currency was at par with the Thai baht. Now the Thai currency is trading at around 40 to the dollar while the Philippine peso’s value has fallen to 53 to the greenback. How did our currency fall so precipitously in just six years?

It wasn’t just the Asian flu, which the Philippines was supposed to have weathered better than most of its neighbors. It wasn’t just the tech meltdown in 2000 and the global economic slump, aggravated by the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

We know the reasons for our fall. But because the nation seems to be doing little to address the problems, foreigners keep reminding us. A few months back there was US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone, criticizing corruption in the judiciary. Last week there was Japanese Ambassador Kojiro Takano, hitting almost everything in his host country, from the security situation to the investment climate and poor infrastructure.

On the heels of Takano’s negative assessment — and his disclosure that fearing for his safety has kept him awake since he was posted here a year ago — came a policy advocacy paper circulated by the American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines. Amcham’s assessment of the Philippine situation reflected the views of Takano. The advocacy paper noted that the country would continue to lose its competitiveness unless the pace of reforms was speeded up.

Among the biggest concerns of Amcham were corruption, tax evasion, security, the budget deficit, runaway population growth, the lack of consistency and transparency in investment policies, antiquated labor laws and even the decline in Filipinos’ English proficiency.

Filipinos are aware of these problems, and there are efforts to address them. What is lacking is urgency — a sense that if we don’t move quickly enough, we may soon be left behind by the world. No one likes criticism. But the ones we’ve heard in recent days, however grating to national pride it may seem to certain quarters, should serve as a wake-up call for speedy reforms.