comparable to the boom years before the 1997–98
Asian financial crisis. Remittances by some eight million Filipinos overseas are
expected to top $12 billion in 2006, a 15% increase from the previous year.
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Merchandise exports grew during the first eight months of the year, and both
agriculture and manufacturing were expected to grow by 5%.
Despite the generally rosy economic picture, analysts are worried about the
sustainability of economic growth. The Philippines is famous for its boom and
bust cycles and for complacency during good times. World Bank country direc-
tor Joachim von Amsberg observed that the country was underperforming: its
growth rate was below potential given an English-speaking work force, abundant
natural resources, and the dynamism of the electronics industry and business
process outsourcing. More reforms were needed, von Amsberg said, including
more open and competitive bidding for public infrastructure and better certainty
over government contracts.
But as in previous boom cycles, growth did not trickle down to the poorest
sectors. Joblessness among the poor is a problem, with employment rising by
a meager 2.3% even as the labor force grew 2.6%. A 2006 study by the Asian
Development Bank and the United Nations found that the Philippines was
among Asia’s worst laggards in achieving the U.N.’s Millennium Development
Goals. The report said that the country failed to meet targets in lowering child
malnutrition, improving access to education, increasing forest cover, reducing
carbon dioxide emissions, and providing urban areas with water. The country’s
progress, the report said, was on a par with that of Bangladesh, Myanmar, and
Papua New Guinea.
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Those countries are hardly the company that Arroyo wants to keep, but the
comparison is nonetheless an indicator of the paradoxical state of the Philippines
in 2006. It is a country marked on the one hand by internecine rivalries
among its elites, a restless military, and a communist insurgency that feeds on
mass poverty, and on the other by booming shopping malls, thriving call cen-
ters, and a lively stock market. The Philippines has always been a country where
paradoxes thrive.
13.