BBM the Bold

President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Romualdez Marcos Jr. has a bold foreign policy. And an even bolder economic policy.

He has managed to balance relations with the United States and China. Both strategic powers are friends of the Philippines but BBM manages to keep China at bay without losing the latter’s economic support, cultural ties and friendship.

Bigger military presence will give China second thoughts from further making intrusions in the West Philippine Sea, outside of the six reefs and a rock Beijing has seized from the Philippine claims.

The six reefs are now virtual Chinese military bases. BBM’s answer to that threat: Allow US troops in nine, possibly 11, bases in the Philippines. In return, if any of Philippine troops, vessels and aircraft, and even its cyberspace, are attacked violently by China in the WPS, it will trigger a response from the US. It’s an ironclad guarantee.

BBM has promised nirvana to Filipinos, short of delivering the moon itself.

That nirvana could be triggered by the Maharlika Investment Corp. (MIC) whose Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) can bankroll any and all kinds of projects, investments and strategies with the end goal of prosperity for millions of Filipinos.

“We will strive to remove the unfreedoms. We will aim to feed the hungry, free the bound and banish poverty,” said President Marcos Jr. last June 12 at the Luneta.

“The Maharlika Investment Fund is the super power tool of development,  a weapon of massive development,” asserts Albay Rep. Joey Salceda.

In a joint statement, the economic managers of President Marcos Jr. called the MIF or the MIC “the vehicle for economic growth.”

Each day, 95 children in the Philippines die from malnutrition. Twenty-seven out of 1,000 Filipino children do not get past their fifth birthday. A third of Filipino children are stunted, or short for their age. Stunting after two years of age can be permanent, irreversible and even fatal.

In the Philippines, 18.1 percent of the population lived below the national poverty line in 2021.

BBM aims to halve poverty incidence to 9 percent by the end of its term in June 2028. That means up to 12 million Filipinos will be rescued from poverty by the President. Instead of having 23.94 million Filipinos earning below $2 a day in 2021, we should have only 12 million Filipino poor – 9 percent of an expected population of 135.6 million by 2028.

Freedom from malnutrition, hunger and poverty is the ultimate emancipation. No president before Marcos Jr. had done it. Yet, he is promising it.

By freeing them from hunger, malnutrition and poverty, the President shall have given Filipinos the ultimate freedom – the freedom of choice. Free to choose their leaders, free to choose options to fight obstacles and adversities and free to live where they want to enjoy life’s blessings.

More than 12 million Filipinos live abroad, a remarkable diaspora of the unrich and the unfree, victims of unfreedoms.

A third of 24 million households in the Philippines have single parents. The other parent is gone, abroad, because he or she has no freedom of choice in the Philippines, to choose a decent, well-paying job, to choose the food they want to eat, to choose the education their children must have and to choose a lifestyle that is comfortable, safe and secure.

“We have laid down the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) for the next six years. We will implement such with vigor and with consistency,” BBM promised at Luneta.

With remarkable bravado, Marcos Jr. vowed: “I have said it before, I shall say it once more: I will be with you on that long and uphill road to achieve our dream of freedom – freedom from hunger, freedom from neglect, freedom from fear.”

PDP’s goals are:

• Maintain annual economic growth rate between 6.0 to 7.0 percent in 2023 and between 6.5 to 8.0 percent from 2024 to 2028.

• Create more, better and more resilient jobs. By 2028, the unemployment rate shall be within 4.0 to 5.0  percent.

• Keep food and overall prices low and stable. Food and overall inflation will be kept to within 2.5 to 4.5  percent in 2023 and within 2.0 to 4.0  percent from 2024 to 2028.

• Transform the production sectors through innovation. The Philippines aims to be in the top 33 percent of the Global Competitiveness Index by 2028.

Salceda says PDP’s main development goals are achievable or do-able. “The Maharlika Investment Fund is the super power tool of development, a weapon of massive development,” he asserts.

He reckons that with just P44 billion of start-up fund, the MIF can parlay up to P7 trillion of investment funds after the MIF goes public.

That money is enough to buy or build energy assets – generation plants, transmission systems, retail outlets to help reduce the electricity shortage;  other assets that can remedy many of the shortages afflicting the country today and production assets that can make the Philippines again an export powerhouse.

Philippine electricity is the costliest in the world. Power is 20 percent of production cost. Labor adds another 15 percent.

Because of the severe energy shortage after then president Corazon Aquino mothballed the $2-billion 1,200-megwatt Bataan nuclear plant, the Philippines missed three major waves of foreign investments that flowed into Southeast Asia in the last 30 years.

The Philippines has been left behind in development by its ASEAN neighbors. Til 1970, Philippine exports, at $300 million year, were ten times those of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Philippine foreign reserves, at $230 million in 1970-1973, were more than that of China, $70 million; Korea $80 million; Thailand $80 million; Malaysia $180 million and Indonesia $170 million. Only Singapore was bigger, $360 million.

Today. China has $3.4 trillion reserves, South Korea $423 billion, Singapore $289 billion, Thailand $225 billion, Indonesia $140 billion, Malaysia $114 billion and the Philippines, $101 billion.

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