THE DEATH OF OUR INDUSTRIES…. ?

Suddenly I woke up this morning at 3:00 a.m.

Then I remembered I had to meet my wife and eldest daughter at the city bus terminal who were coming home from Manila. They were there already for the past two days to shop for merchandise for sale here in Naga City, which is where we reside.

I was happy for them. They had a passion to get on with our source of livehilood, trading and manufacturing. It is not with little joy especially that my eldest daughter, altho a college graduate and a cum laude at the Ateneo de Naga, decided to take a shot at business. And she’s doing alright.

She is employed at the Naga College Foundation as a marketing consultant but she finds time to engage in business at the side. After trying out several businesses (pizza making, small computer printing, handicraft-making, etc.), she finally found a business comfortably suited to her personal disposition- the making of women’s accessories.

She discovered to her tripping joy that accessories are forever in demand. Women being vain and conscious of how they look, do not stop buying things that would enhance their beauty and their attraction to men. This is not, of course, discounting the fact women fix themselves up to feel good inside and not purposely to bait a man.

But this is not the real subject of my blog. If ever, it is just to comment that in our family entrepreneurship is a big word. I myself and my wife are not employed ever. I quit teaching just after one year and started a business. Since then I have never looked back.

But the centerpoint of my little story is about the two shirts my wife brought home and of bigger things about Philippine business. It was a delight to augment my bare wardrobe with two attractive polo shirts whose designs would be a plus to my sartorial collection.

My wife was absolutely satisfied with her purchase for she got the shirts apiece at only P150.00. When I looked at the collar tag I saw they were made in Thailand.

I was happy for the gifts but I was sad for it dawned on me globalization had already caught up with our Philippine economy. Imperceptibly, slowly, our own industries are dying because of
intense lopsided competition from products abroad, especially those coming from China, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia and other Asian countries.

I looked at the shirts and I estimated if these shirts were made here they would not sell for P150.00 each. They would be priced above P250.00 apiece here. Clearly, no garment manufacturer can withstand this kind of competition. I dread to imagine how many of our workers would be run out of jobs when our garment industry collapses.

The whole economic landscape is bleak in fact.

All our industries are at siege. Local electronic products are much underpriced by Asian competition. For instance, a GE light bulb is priced at P25.00 here in Naga. A similar one coming from Indonesia is priced at P16.00. A paint brush, 2 inches in width, and made in China is being sold at P18.00. A similar item locally made, but even poorer in quality, is being sold for P20.00.

Baguio vegetable growers are up in hands for their products are being outsold in Divisoria by imported vegetables coming from China and Taiwan. The vegetable importers who, for the most part are Filipino-Chinese, claim the vegetables coming from abroad are cheaper and of higher quality. What can you say to that?

At a talk show on TV that discussed precisely this problem of uneven competition, one Fil-Chinese businessman was asked where the Philippines could possibly excel in the face of mounting competition from other Asian countries.

He said there are three areas where the Philippines can compete: tourism, services and agriculture. He mentioned agriculture not so much with the view of exporting products abroad but to ensure food sufficiency for the country.

As an astute businessman, he does not see a bright future for Philippine manufacturing as the local market is small and there’s no Chinaman’s chance for the local manufacturers to export and compete with big Asian manufacturers who are already deeply entrenched in the wide Asian market and which have fully attained vertical and horizontal integration in their manufacturing activities.

This economic outlook for the country offers much for us to ponder. We must take stock of our resources and see where we can really be strong in and go from there.

There are, of course, bright spots. One expatriate manager on assignment here in the Philippines commented that we tend to look at our situatioin very negatively. He observed the Philippines is way, way much better than Egypt, Columbia, the Middle East or Africa.

He pointed out, for instance, that before 1995 there was no huge telecom infrastructure to speak of. After deregulation, billions of dollars have been invested in fixed line and cellular networks producing a system with over 5,000 kms of fiber optic backbone. Fixed line capacity increased from 900,00o in 1995 to over 7 million today. Cellphones were non-existent in 1995. Now, Smart has over 15 million subscribers, Globe around 10 million and SunCellular around 1.5 million.

Today, we have the MRT, the SKYWAY, the NAIA Terminal 2 and many skyscrapers that were not there before year 2000.

He said Philippine exports increased by over 600% for the past eight years. And we are producing and exporting all electronic chips used by Nokia in all its electronic products.

There other good stories around. Call centers are sprouting everywhere and even in the provinces. It is estimated this service industry will employ about 100,000 workers within a span of five years.

Well, perhaps the Philippine story is not all bleak after all. We just have to keep on improving, improvising and innovating to become world-class competitors ourselves.

The Extinction Of Philippine Languages

Much has been said of the eventual extinction of all Philippine languages because of the cock-eyed language policy of the government where only one, in the pursuit of one national language to prevail, is being developed, enhanced and promoted.

Tagalog is considered to be the sole survivor in this wholesale extinction as it was chosen to be the basis of a national language yet to be fully developed.

Now, if this is soon to become a reality within this century, as some linguists fearfully predicted, is this not culturally suicidal for a nation?

If the United Nations is imminently worried of the extinction of some animal species like the Tasmanian dog of Australia, is not a language, the very mirror of a people’s soul, just as extremely important, or even more so, than the Tasmanian dog?

Do we not celebrate the sheer number of cultures, and the wealth of languages we find in every corner of the world? Is this not simply the reason why tourism is an exciting industry because of unique cultural dissimilarities?

Can we not say bluntly that if you kill or purposely eradicate a people’s language is this not a vicious kind of ethnic cleansing where you cut the tongue literally to make the people rootless and ashamed of its identity?

It is true languages come and go, as history is littered with the death of so many, but today’s generation of peoples is more enlightened now. Cleansing of any sort cannot be tolerated or adopted as a matter of official policy. Every minority is protected and respected and while integration may be an ideal, it is no justification to ride roughshod on the minority’s wishes to retain its own culture, just for the sake of state-building.

I would even venture to say that the various indigenous cultures should enrich, strengthen and vivify the nation. It would be sheer hubris to aver that only one ethno-linguistic group can contribute to the verdant growth of a nation’s culture!

The issue rests on the question of cultural diversity. Perhaps we can liken it to the fauna and flora of the world. Modern thought now places great value to the bio-diversity of our planet. We now take grave concern when a plant specie dies or a unique, beautiful butterfly with elegant wings, the last of its specie, will die never to resurface on this planet.

Our country came to being out of the colonial imperatives brought upon its people by the occupiers who, it is true, had to ignore diversities for the sake of building one nation-state.

Our leaders also ignored the fact that, out of our dim past, we emerged as a nation with diversities. We were not homogenous in culture. We speak more than 160 languages. However diverse, each reflects the world-view and unique culture of each ethnic group .

The question now is, are we to obliterate these languages for the sake of statehood?

Are we to make the vast majority of our people embarrassed to use their own native tongues, oppressed in their own nation, deprived and disemboweled of the pride to possess and use the tongues of their forebears?

Are we to cast aside this vast cultural wealth for the sake of state homogeneity?

To continue with this policy of ethnic weeding, so to speak, is to inflict upon ourselves a great deprivation of untold magnitude.

I fear the day when my great grandchildren cannot even read what I write in Bikol for it has been debased slowly, unobstrusively, imposing no pain or sense of loss while the debasement and denigration take on a form of denial of its existence.

Again, if the United Nations takes great loss for the Tasmanian dog, are we not also to feel even greater pain to realize we have lost a treasure handed down to us by our ancestors?

Ultimately, it rests upon each ethno-cultural group to safeguard its own treasures for no one else will. One header in the www.oragonrepublic.com website says it all: Kun bako kita, siisay? (Trans.: If not us, who else?)

Yes, indeed, no one else, but no one else, will do it for us!!!