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Growth without equity
THE LACK of domestic jobs has fueled the great Filipino Diaspora, and money remittances of these economic refugees have kept the economy afloat, triggering consumption spending, which in turn stimulates the economy.
In recent years, the country’s gross domestic product growth has been encouraging, but the growth might be concentrated on certain areas or social strata only. If we have pockets of prosperity amid large cavities of poverty, then this is growth without equity. When millions of families need a roof over their heads, when millions of our countrymen cannot buy essential drugs, when millions do not have access to regular clean drinking water, or when students won’t be able to finish high school, then what we have is growth we can only read in the papers but one that we cannot personally feel.
Widespread hunger and poverty prove that effects of economic growth spurts have yet to trickle down. And this is being blunted all the more by the global economic uncertainties. Depressing realities on the ground cannot be denied. Many of our people are left behind, or are entirely left out.
The challenge for the government is to translate the economic growth it has been striving to achieve into more jobs, more food, and more houses for the people. Government data itself showed the large unmet needs in these — there’s involuntary hunger, unemployment or underemployment. This is jobless growth, and this is not good.
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