PH INFRASTRUCTURE, PRIVATE SECTOR PARTICIPATION

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Sources of Official Development Assistance or ODA for Asian countries, notably the ADB, are of the observation that the Philippines has to enable the private sector all the more to fast-track the augmentation of basic infrastructures across the archipelago. While I still have to observe the impact of the Public Private Partnership modality, I agree strongly with the ODA sources that infrastructures in PH must be accelerated at more massive scales.

Let’s take the case of the railways. When the previous president Gloria Arroyo began her 6-year term in 2004, six (6) lightrail projects—Lines 3 to 9—were slated for completion during her term. She finished her term with not a single project delivered, thus delaying the opportunity field’s fruition from the said projects. Many more planned infrastructures remain undelivered up until the present.

The Aquino regime’s penchant for Inquisitional witch-hunting of Arroyo-era bureaucrats, including Arroyo and husband, had already caused immense delays in pump-priming measures such as infrastructure augmentation and new spending.

Below is a report from the Asian Development Bank regarding the agency’s analysis and standpoint on the question of infrastructure development for the emerging market PH.

[Philippines, 01 September 2011]

Source: http://beta.adb.org/news/philippines-needs-greater-private-sector-integration-better-infrastructure-adb-report

Philippines Needs Greater Private Sector Integration, Better Infrastructure - ADB Report

20 Jul 2011

MANILA, PHILIPPINES – There needs to be a closer relationship between micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and large firms in the Philippines, a new report published by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) says.

There is also a need to improve the accessibility and quality of infrastructure by promoting public-private partnerships (PPPs).

The ADB report, Philippines: Private Sector Assessment, outlines constraints and strategies that can boost the private sector in the country. One of these constraints is a disconnect between large companies–mostly in the export industry–and domestic small and medium enterprises, many of which do not prosper due to lack of capital, unreliable supply chains, and weak demand for their output.

The report urges the government to help MSMEs by lowering the cost of doing business. This can be done by improving infrastructure; streamlining and removing excess administrative procedures; and creating a fair competitive environment through antitrust laws and good business practices.

“The inability of MSMEs to provide efficient and cost-effective support to large firms on the one hand, and the lack of demand from large firms for such support from MSMEs, on the other hand, present a vicious cycle that debilitates the sector,” the report said. The vertical integration of MSMEs into large enterprises has been less successful in the Philippines than in countries like Germany and Japan.

"Effective PPP implementation can boost the country's competitiveness, as it results in better infrastructure quality and technical expertise of people. More importantly, it contributes to efficient delivery of public services," said the author of the report, Cayetano Paderanga, a former professor at the University of the Philippines' School of Economics.

In the Philippines, PPPs have typically been shunned by business because of unclear policy and regulatory frameworks, a cumbersome government approval process, and a lack of bankable projects. Other impediments, such as controversial judicial decisions, have also constrained PPP growth.

To encourage partnerships, the government should improve transparency in PPP project selection, provide better accounting of revenues and expenditures, and have a higher-profile anti-corruption drive, the report says. “The success of reforms in both rules and administrative processes and infrastructure support is expected to result in higher foreign direct investments and an increase in fixed capital,” it added.

“This forward-looking assessment makes concrete proposals to realize the potential contribution of the private sector to inclusive economic growth in the Philippines,” said Neeraj Jain, ADB’s Country Director for the Philippines. “We are gratified that these proposals have contributed to the policy directions embedded in the Philippines Development Plan for 2011-2016.”

The report recommends that ADB help the Philippines to focus on private sector growth and increasing synergy between the public and private sectors.

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GLOBAL OLIGARCHS WINNING IN AQUINO’S DISPENSATION

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Global oligarchs and their military-technocratic-political subalterns supported Noynoy Aquino’s presidency. Their bridgeheads here are the likes of the Makati Business Club, Cuisia-Paderanga Opus Dei troikas, and the oligarchs whose names sound Filipino but whose own businesses have grown global in scope.

Through the PPP or Public Private Partnerships, both foreign and local oligarchs have been partnering to monopolize benefits from economic growth. The terms ‘foreign’ and ‘local’ have already become erased in fact, obsolete to the hilt, as the borderless economy has been galvanizing by the day.

Below is another article I wrote during the electoral campaign period. Let us reflect on its contents, and see who have been gaining in the growth surge of the PH economy: the global oligarchs, or the poor folks?

[Philippines, 09 April 2011]

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GLOBAL ELITES FOR NOYNOY AQUINO

Erle Frayne D. Argonza
21 January 2010

This analyst has been a keen observer of the behavior of the global elites (‘military-industrial complex’ was coined for them in the 1950s) and their maneuverings in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. In a borderless global economic order, all the more have the global elites been flexing their muscles, with the aim of destroying nation-states in order to advance their pecuniary pursuits.

Come to think of it, this country never really was able to fully exercise sovereignty so as to effectively dis-engage itself from the global elites. As signatory to the Breton woods agreement that created the World Bank-IMF Group, this country had created enormous constrictions on its own growth and prosperity drives as greedy global oligarchs control its strategic business interests and loot its finances via liberalized currency and financial trading that the IMF-World Bank enforced.

The same oligarchic cabals (note the plural), through the Tri-Lateral Commission, were the ones who orchestrated the overthrow of the autocrat F. Marcos for stubbornly refusing to submit to their dictates. There was that juncture when Marcos released enormous amounts of gold in the global market, which effectively crashed the price of gold and angered the British-Dutch financial cartels.

The lynchpin personages in the country—political and business leaders—who serve as agents of the global oligarchs, are now aging, their influence plummeting in both public and private spheres. You can see the ‘who-is-who’ among these key crocodile players during the forum of the Makati Business Club, including that old hag of a technocrat who was World Bank’s chief operator in liberalizing the key sectors of the economy to equalize the playing field for foreign oligarchs such as those connected with George Soros (see Quantum fund investors).

My observation of unfolding political events shows that the global oligarchy is consolidating its support in just a single political team: the Noynoy Aquino-Mar Roxas Team. Noynoy recently spoke like a local George Bush who promised a friendly tax policy environment for Big Business, thus echoing the Jurassic Reaganomics policies of liberalization, privatization, deregulation, tax reforms, less subsidies for social services, and wage freeze.

Noynoy and the Liberal Party serve the interests of the global elites, they being the civil libertarian face to oligarchism. We wonder how the liberal agenda would cohere with their ‘bayan muna bago lahat’ cliché, since the same agenda serves oligarchic interest by creating an open door political context which will serve as the sweetener for uncontrolled greed by global looters and plunderers. Liberalism serves egotistical, self-aggrandizing pockets and not the nation & people.

It is pure and empty sophism, this liberal agenda so-called, the same sophism that served the interests in antiquity of the elites of Athens. The same Athenian oligarchy then waged ceaseless wars, with political sophists serving as public blinders for their true agenda: loot and ravage polities everywhere where their dirty hands can dip unto. Those wars—Pelopponesian Wars—led to the catastrophic decay of Greece and the destruction of its classical culture.

The agenda of the global oligarchy is to keep RP and diverse client-states into ‘weak states’ and ‘failed states’, so that eventually they can break up our nation and others into mini-states. Each mini-state will become private property of certain gigantic corporate groups, with their own corporate armies coming to their defense. The same oligarchs have already succeeded in fragmenting former Yugoslavia, and there’s no reason why they won’t proceed to bring such demonic successes to new levels such as to balkanize the Philippines.

Nationalism, not liberalism, is the ideology that can serve to galvanize us into a strong nation with strong institutions, and empower us to effectively neutralize the destructive agenda of the global oligarchy. We Filipinos need to stand together firmly against those forces that have been striving to destroy us from within and with-out, our bonds thus cemented by genuine nationalism patriotism.

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Come Visit E. Argonza’s blogs & website anytime!
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