Driving home, I was listening on the radio to some parts of the recently concluded State of the Nation Address (SONA) by PGMA, when she said this little tidbit:

The state of our nation is a strong economy.

Now this one of those times I’m glad I never go above 40 km/h, because I almost lost control of the wheel when a ginormous frikkin’ white owl landed on my hood and screamed at me:

The economy is more fair to the poor than ever before... O'Rly?

Let’s look at some of the points I found really interesting:

[…]Kung meron man tayong malaking kaaway na tinalo, walang iba kundi ang utang, iyong foreign debt. Past administrations conjured the demon of foreign debt. We exorcised it[…]

Ows? The Bureau of Treasury has some interesting data on this: Outstanding Debt (yearly) | Debt Indicator (yearly). Here are some visualizations (feel free to check the numbers, I’m doing this in the middle of the night):

Data

Outstanding Debt

I don’t feel exorcised of; more like exocised at (which is probably what she meant). According to IBON’s research on the Bureau of Treasury’s data, government debt has continued to rise to P4.23 trillion in March 2009 which is almost double the P2.17 trillion debt inherited from the Estrada government. The administration has effectively been borrowing an additional P256.8 million annually since coming to power.

If there’s anything good about that data, it’s the slowing growth of debt — that is, until 2008 hit, and it shot right back up again:

Debt Growth Rate

Google Docs: spreadsheet | web page

Other download options: Debt vs Education Excel 2007 | Debt vs Education Excel 97-2003

[…]Pardon my partiality for the teaching profession. I was a teacher….Kaya namuhunan tayo ng malaki sa edukasyon at skills training[…]

Ah yes, the teaching profession; let’s take a look at how the administration has budgeted for education, shall we?

Budget Allotment for Education

A nice, upward trend since 2003… until, of course, we start to do some comparisons. According to the aforementioned IBON research:

• The Arroyo administration (2001-09) allotted only 15.1% of the national budget to education which is lower than under Estrada (18%, 1999-2000) and Ramos (16.6%, 1992-98).
• In 2009, the Arroyo administration is only spending P6 per Filipino per day on education — while paying the equivalent of P21 on debt service.

Let’s have a nice graph to show some of that data:

Budget Allotment for Education vs Debt Service

According to Bulatlat.com, P2B of that budget will be spent for the construction of classrooms; unfortunately: “with the P2 billion budget, only 3,076 classrooms can be built. Arroyo said that each classroom costs P650,000 ($13,882.96). In a statement, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) estimated that the DepEd needs to construct an additional 41,905 classrooms in order to attain a 1:45 classroom-to- student ratio.”

[…]Bumaba ang bilang ng nagsasabing mahihirap sila, mula 59% sa 47%[…] The economy is more fair to the poor than ever before[…]

Let’s take a gander at that IBON research again:

• [There has been a] 530,642 increase in the number of poor families between 2000 and 2006 – to 4.7 million poor families in 2006.
• 2.1 million increase in the number of poor Filipinos between 2000 and 2006 – to 27.6 million in 2006.
• Meanwhile the net income of the Top 1000 corporations in the Philippines increased 490% between 2001 and 2007, from P116 billion to P686 billion.
• In 2006, the net worth of just the 20 richest Filipinos – including close Arroyo allies Lucio Tan, Enrique Razon, Jr., Eduardo Cojuangco, Enrique Aboitiz and others – was P801 billion (US$15.6 billion), which was equivalent to the combined income for the year of the poorest 10.4 million Filipino families.

Your Pareto Principle at work, ladies and gentlemen. Let me channel the late great Billy Mays now: But wait! There’s more!

Lumikha tayo ng walong milyong trabaho, an average of a million per year, much, much more than at any other time[…]

IBON:

• The period 2001-2008 is the longest period of sustained high unemployment in the country’s history – the true unemployment rate averaged some 11.2 percent.
• 621,000 increase in unemployment between Jan-01 and Apr-09 – to 4.2 million.
• 1.9 million increase in underemployment between Jan-01 and Apr-09 – to 6.6 million.
• Combined unemployment and underemployment increased 2.5 million between Jan-01 and Apr-09 – to 10.8 million.
• The quality of jobs has worsened: merely part-time work increased by 5.9 million and now accounts for 14.3 million or two out of five of all jobs. Moreover, those “with jobs but not working” more than doubled and increased by 489,000 to reach 839,000.
• The period 2001-2008 has seen the most Filipinos forced abroad to find jobs in the country’s history – deployments averaged 990,000 annually compared to 469,709 (Aquino), 713,505 (Ramos) and 839,324 (Estrada); some 1.24 million were deployed last year or 3,400 Filipinos leaving every day. There are over 9 million Filipinos forced to find work abroad.

That, dear friends, is the true state of the nation: we’re in a rut, hanging on by the fingernails of OFW’s. Allow me to leave you with this moment of Zen:

As persons, we may lose our bodies but we can always save our souls. As a people, we may lose our riches but we can always recover our spirit. That is the point of struggle, that is the essence of victory. The time to do so is now. It is the critical hour. It is the twilight hour.

Let us fight to save ourselves. Let us fight to save a nation.

State of Grace, Conrado de Quiros