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As of this writing, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada was reported
to have backed away from sponsoring a bill seeking a nationwide,
across-the-board P125 raise in daily wages. He was supposed to have
done so last Monday as Congress resumed its regular session.
As the saying goes, if it’s too
good to be true, it probably is.
For several years now, unions
have campaigned for a comprehensive hike in floor pay, which
Congress last granted in 1989. They kept their fingers crossed that
during this election year lawmakers would be more accommodating of
organized labor’s proposal for a P125 raise.
Unions’ campaign hurt
Now it turns out that the
unions’ campaign toward a living wage has become a victim of the
very same politics that they had hoped would boost their cause.
Estrada balked after Cavite Rep.
Crispin Remulla moved to recall the bill that the House of
Representatives had passed last month. Remulla claimed that he
merely wants to “correct potential legal infirmities” before it
reaches the bicameral conference committee.
At the Senate, Estrada said he
would prefer to sponsor his own wage-hike measure when the House is
through rectifying its own version of the bill.
Estrada had previously said that
the pro-administration House passed the pay-hike bill in order to
score points at the oppositionist Senate’s expense.
“I think it was blackmail on
the part of the House,” Estrada was quoted saying. “If we in the
Senate do not act on this, the congressmen would point again to the
Senate and say that the Senate is not doing anything, or that the
Senate does not want to pass the measure.”
‘Bait and switch’
Estrada called it
“blackmail,” but he probably meant “bait and switch.” He
said that when the congressmen passed the pay-hike bill they knew
“fully well that our economy will collapse.”
If Estrada really believed—like
his House counterparts—that the P125 raise would be disastrous to
the economy, why did he announce that he would support it in the
Senate?
All that Estrada wanted to do, it
now turns out, was to put President Arroyo—who would be expected
to veto the bill—on the spot.
Estrada and the congressmen were
merely playing political basketball, dribbling the pay-hike bill
like the proverbial leather on the court made up of the hopes of
millions of Filipino workers for decent wages.
Foul!
Yap’s rosy forecasts
Following the release of official
data showing that Philippine agriculture expanded by 3.88 percent in
2006, some analysts were quick to describe it as a
“lower-than-expected” growth rate for the farm sector, which
accounts for a fifth of the country’s gross domestic product.
What the analysts missed,
according to officials of the Department of Agriculture, was the
bigger picture. The DA had targeted agricultural growth to reach 4
percent in 2006 and the 3.88-percent expansion just narrowly missed
the target. Moreover, the 2006 figure was a lot higher than the 2005
level of 2.31 percent.
Previously the farming sector
grew 5.23 percent in 2004, 3.51 percent in 2003, 3.81 percent in
2002 and 4.46 percent in 2001.
Data showed that before the
Philippines was ravaged by a series of typhoons in the latter part
of 2006 agricultural growth targets were on track, with first
quarter figures at 3.91 percent, the second quarter posting a high
of 6.6 percent and the third quarter at 4.22 percent.
Spoiler typhoons
The strong performance of the
agriculture sector in the first three quarters of 2006 was a result
in large part of the DA’s stepped-up implementation of programs
that boosted yield. From September to December, however, typhoons
ravaged large swaths of the archipelago. Result: the farming’s
fourth quarter growth slid to 1.64 percent.
Officials said that damage to
farmlands was minimal due to early planting, which the DA
encouraged. In contrast, the fisheries subsector was badly
hit—still it emerged the top gainer last year.
Fisheries posted a solid 4.93
percent in the first quarter and an even better 11.24 percent in the
second. Growth in subsequent quarters sagged to 5.77 percent and
3.48 percent due to “extreme weather events,” which damaged fish
pens.
Rising fuel prices also curtailed
commercial fishing, officials added.
Still, DA Secretary Arthur Yap
told newsmen recently that the agriculture sector faces a
“brighter scenario” this year.
Raising rural incomes
He said the DA will intensify its
bid to boost farm and fisheries production and raise rural incomes.
Yap expects agriculture to expand by 4 percent to 5 percent in 2007
and even 7 percent to 8 percent in 2008.
Yap anchored his upbeat forecasts
for 2007 and 2008 on government plans to raise public spending on
rural infrastructure—including, irrigation and postharvest
facilities—and seed technology to further boost farm yields and
minimize crop wastage due to inadequate storage facilities.
In addition, Yap cited a flurry
of foreign investments in the sector, topped by 19 projects funded
by Chinese investors, which the media reckoned to total about P240
billion.
“We can say that 2007 is an
investment year for the agriculture sector,” Yap said. “We would
be expecting an array of investments in this sector and the
government itself, through the DA, would be pouring more money in
hard infrastructure this year.”
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