Progress

BANGKOK: I always leave Bangkok a little envious.

Since the eighties, when I regularly visited Thailand as a consultant on alternative development models for the United Nations University, I used that economy as some sort of benchmark against which our own economy could be compared. We had, at that time, basically the same population size, the same socio-economic profile, the same level of per capita income and, until the recent years, the same dollar exchange rate.

But even then, I noted a lot of difference.

In the eighties, the communist insurgency in Thailand was decisively crushed. In the late seventies, a student uprising in Bangkok, led by Maoist factions, was suppressed with much blood in the streets. There was continuing pressure for more democratization from the enlarging urban middle classes and the political system adjusted quite remarkably through the decade of the eighties.

I worked in the slum areas of Bangkok for a while during this time. The communities I visited were as poor as similar communities we have in the metropolitan Manila area. But they were neater. The homes were squeaky clean. The gutters did not stink. Food was abundant and cheap.

The bigger difference was in the rural areas.

Thailand, even then, was an agricultural powerhouse. There was little angst about land ownership. Agricultural productivity steadily improved. The farms were excellently managed.

Because Thailand was one contiguous land area, transport of agricultural produce obviously less of cost than it is in our archipelagic economy. Fresh water, flowing down great rivers all year round, was abundant.

As in the Philippines, Thailand has communal problems with the Islamic minority in the south. Tourism, however, eased that dramatically. We do not see today the disparity in incomes, health and education levels in the south of Thailand. There is ample employment offered by tourism and many related industries spawned by this great source of national income.

The "culture of tourism" in Thailand is remarkable. That, after all, is the country’s biggest source of foreign exchange.

Thailand makes from tourism roughly the amount we make from remittances of our large migratory labor force. But there is a qualitatively different domestic implication here.

Tourism receipts encourage the growth of hundreds of thousands of small, village-based enterprises producing excellent food products, handicrafts and services. It reinforces the identity of the indigenous cultural practices and deepens appreciation of the peculiarity of Thai culture.

On the other hand, our dependence on remitted incomes has made our domestic economy consumption-led. The large migratory labor force that has become the major source of income for a large part of our population looks at our indigenous culture with contempt.

Even in the eighties, too, the Thai bureaucracy was markedly superior to ours. It was a bureaucracy that, rather ironically, exercised independence from the political parties because of the long period of political turbulence that rocked the country. A highly professional bureaucracy drew up long-term plans, built superior infrastructure and enforced wise policies.

At the time we were drawing up "medium-term" economic plans that coincided with presidential terms, most other countries around us were working with 30-year planning horizons.

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to revisit Bangkok intimately. I took the new subway, the skytrain and the river ferry. I enjoyed the skyways that crisscrossed a city that was once legendary for traffic gridlock.

The new Bangkok international airport has just been inaugurated. Soon, the old airport, which is itself larger than our existing facility, will be retired.

Movement around this city is now incredibly efficient, thanks to the trains that actually interconnected. The subway, the light rail and the river ferry all cohered logically, unlike the mass transport system in Manila where, for some insane reason, the rails systems do not connect and public bus line along Edsa is redundant with the rail line rather than complementary.

The streets are clean and the people in the mass transit systems are well garbed. A robust middle class populates this thriving city. Food is still cheap, given the efficiency of Thai agriculture. The night markets and department stores are overflowing with goods produced by the hundreds of thousands of village-based enterprises.

There is still evidence of the Asian financial crisis that began with the collapse of the Thai baht in 1997. There are a few skeletons of unfinished high-rises still visible. But, over-all, this is an economy that is moving strongly ahead. Everywhere, construction projects are buzzing. There is a heady sense of economic optimism in the air.

The intelligentsia still grumbles about Thaksin. But the politics here is quite settled. There is none of the brinksmanship and grandstanding that we have gotten used to. Here the politicians actually try to govern.

Meanwhile, we are still grappling with obsolete insurgent movements. Our agricultural productivity is still flat as we continue fretting uselessly about giving land to the tillers. Our infrastructure is backward and our consumers refuse to pay the right toll. We continue to confuse protectionism with patriotism, democracy with disorder. Our politics is chaotic.

On every point and every measure, the Thai economy is outstripping us every passing day. That is the source of the envy I feel each time I visit Bangkok.

Twenty years ago, we loved to say that Thailand is twenty years behind us. Today, given the numbers, we seem to be lagging twenty years behind Thailand.

Perhaps I should now change my benchmark for comparison and schedule a visit to Vietnam.