Read this in The Manila Times digital edition.
I RECALL a sentence from a previous column, and it said something like this: No day passes in the realm of Bagong Pilipinas without a tribute being paid to the supposed excellent stewardship of the Philippine economy, which has been described in breathtaking terms: the "rising star," the "new roaring, soaring tiger" and so on and so forth of the regional economy. The recurrent drumbeat of Panglossian optimism has been a daily feature of Philippine life, the joint undertaking of the state's propaganda machine and our political overlords. The overlords, the major cheerleaders, are not trained economic forecasters, if you took time to notice, but are public works contractors-cum-congressmen or racketeers-cum-congressmen channeling Milton Friedman with gusto.
The bombast does not take a holiday, and it is in this light that I tried to find out whether this was fact or fiction. Or whether there is any sliver of truth to this over-the-top claim about Manila's unprecedented economic ascendancy. I did a cursory reading on what part of the Asian region exactly are investments pouring on a massive scale, especially investments related to technology and the new economy. Just one newspaper article, a news story from the New York Times, said it all. Investments made on a fast and furious and urgent scale are taking place, not in the Philippines but in Malaysia. Remember, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) was drawn from the Maphilindo, which simply meant the Malay countries of Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia. The Asean is actually an expanded Maphilindo.
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