“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”
—
John F. Kennedy

THE Philippines is blessed. It is rich. It is poor.

It has the tremendous capacity of renewal after every wave of exploitation.

It has disgorged so much wealth from the bowels of the earth, and yet nobody has accounted for their whereabouts; their foreign destinations; the ROI from the foreign investments; taxes collected from them if any; and any measurable benefits to the Filipino people.

Thus, the Philippines is a poor little rich country which has produced fortunes after fortunes for the few, while remaining poor, begging for foreign investments to come in when what goes out appears to be more than what comes in.

This is one priority task that the next president should look into.

That is, how much monies have been brought out of the country? Who is keeping track of them? By what authority? Where are they invested at? Are they taxable? Have profits been repatriated back to the Philippines? Have dividends of their investments been declared?

If all the monies earned and accumulated in the Philippines by local tycoons, carpetbaggers, and transnationals were plowed back into the economy instead of being spirited out or invested abroad, the Philippines will probably need less private foreign investments while industrializing at the same time. Think about it!

The experience of South Korea during the dictatorial regime of Gen. Park Chung-Hee (Ret.), president of South Korea, is a lesson in economic nationalism.

It was during the 16-year autocratic rule of President Park that South Korea, without natural resources, emerged from total devastation wrought by the savagery of the Korean war to an export-oriented industrial giant by the 1980s. President Park was assassinated by his own close-in KIA.

He encouraged private enterprise and capital formation, as exemplified by the emergence and growth of the “Chaebols” (diversified conglomerates, e.g. Samsung, akin to the Japanese “Zaibatsus,”) provided that the vast wealth accumulated was kept within Korea, and re-invested inside Korea while freely enjoying the perks and lifestyle of the rich.

It was only in the 1990s when democratic South Korea started easing many restrictions by allowing foreign travel and investments abroad while simultaneously enticing additional foreign capital to come, especially in heavy industries.

In contrast, the Philippines has been a “milking cow” for the last 50 years.

The Philippines has been lax and reckless in its failure to control the outflow of capital made in the Philippines to every conceivable haven abroad whether the funds were laundered, or “salted,” or for consumption, such as, homes, or numbered accounts in Switzerland, or investments in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei, China, US, Canada, Guam, Australia, London, and places other than the Philippines from where the wealth first originated and had been accumulated from.

It is paradoxical, ironic, and shameful that the Philippines, with so much wealth, allowed capital to flow out in the midst of growing poverty and foreign investments lack.

When all is said and done, the Philippines is a poor little rich country that cannot even get its elections automated without scandals and anomalies surrounding them.

Who needs capital? We have them but they are no longer here, and nobody knows where the wealth of the land had gone.

That’s the big challenge for the next president.

You be the judge. (For comments and views, please e-mail: chaff_fromthegrain@yahoo.com.ph)