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FairTrade commends The Times
We, at the Fair Trade Alliance (FairTrade) commend The Manila Times
for its January 23, 2008, editorial “Rebuild our damaged
agricultural base.”
Since 2001, we, at FairTrade have been
articulating to the public and our policymakers the need to rebuild
our damaged agricultural base. Except for banana and pineapple, our
agriculture has been in a state of stagnation since 1980. FairTrade
has been asking the government to discard the neo-liberal economic
thinking that has guided the formulation of trade and development
policies in this country since the early l980s.
The chronic Philippine economic crisis and the
resulting mass poverty and unemployment among our people clearly
show that neo-liberalism, which worships on the altar of free trade
and one-sided economic liberalization, is a terrible failure as a
development compass for the nation.
However, our economic technocrats still keep on
insisting on the neo-liberal agenda. In the latest Medium-Term
Philippine Development Plan of the National Economic Development
Authority (NEDA), the government’s focus is on the further opening
up of the economy, this time zeroing in on what the technocrats call
as the “remaining barriers” to openness such as restrictions in
foreign ownership in the land market, public utility business
operations, mining and media.
As it is, the Philippine economy, one of
Asia’s weakest, is already one of the most open in the region; and
yet, they claim there is no other alternative to the further
liberalization and opening up of the economy. Hence, their
continuing agenda of further lowering our industrial and
agricultural tariffs, which are already among the lowest in the
developing world.
We, at FairTrade, refuse to swallow the
neo-liberal pitch that there is no other development path except
further economic liberalization. In today’s globalized or
interconnected world, nations survive, grow and develop based on
their national interests and development priorities. Under economic
globalization, we need more, not less, economic nationalism. Hence,
we propose the Nationalist Development Agenda (NDA), a project which
seeks to outline the root causes of the Philippine economic malaise
and the alternative nationalist road to survival, recovery and
sustained development. As part of FairTrade’s NDA and its 13-point
Economic Program, we propose to rebuild the nation’s agricultural
base.
In today’s highly volatile and unpredictable
world, the Philippines can not afford to have no food and raw
material security of its own. The government can also ignore—at
its own peril—the food, income and welfare needs of our farmers
and large rural population, whose lives have been adversely affected
by government’s policy inconsistency (swinging pendulum-like from
protection to deregulation and back) and lack of a clear pro-farmer
sustainable development strategy for the sector in the last three
decades.
We have 14 essential demands and your editorial
mentioned some of them. (Editor’s note: We have had to shorten
this letter by removing the 14 demands. These can be found in the
FairTrade Web http://fairtradeweb.Wordpress.com.)
Above all, we, at FairTrade, believe that the
only way the Philippines can move forward and catch up with Asia is
through our collective efforts as brother and sister Filipinos,
working together in pursuit of a common Nationalist Development
Agenda.
Sa ngalan ng kasapian at mga sektor na kasanib
sa Fair Trade Alliance, mabuhay kayo! Maraming salamat.
DUANE MENDOZA
For Fair Trade Alliance (FairTrade)
fta@fairtradealliance.org
3rd Floor, PRRM Building,
#56 Mother Ignacia Avenue
corner Dr. Lascano, Quezon City
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