Admit it— the Marcos Junior administration in less than a year, turned the economy around. While detractors may say that onion prices remained high, any person worth his academic salt would tell you that it takes one to two years before these economic reforms would trickle down to the mass of us. We may see the peso strengthening to 53 per US dollar yet, this is just one index. And the stock market may still be on a roller coaster ride, or its lights flicker from red to green to black, but still, we are seeing a return of foreign investors to our shores, unseen since the Duterte administration.
The problem is, though this administration may have its self-inflicted wounds, these are, by my measure, signs of rookie mistakes. Better that these mistakes happen now than we see them two or three years from now. What is certain is that the administration is really focused on its trajectory of seeing the Philippines achieve middle-income status by 2025. And barring any foolish scandal hitting headlines once more, this administration may yet achieve the impossible.
Marcos Junior, they say, is always going abroad, this time to Japan. But of course. Tensions are rising in the Asia-Pacific region and these external shocks require the Chief Executive’s attention. Imagine if war just suddenly breaks out in the Taiwan straits, these may actually affect our country, not just on the economic, but on the social front.
As my good friend, Dr. Rommel Banlaoi pointed out, thousands even millions of Taiwanese people may migrate to the Philippines when hostilities begin at the Straits. Do we have the absorptive capability for an additional million souls? Is our government prepared for this contingency?
There is always a flipside in crisis situations. Investor money may shift course toward Manila if such an outbreak happens. If China does not attack us, the possibility of hot money going into our economy looms big. This hot money, however, would surely not materialize if we are dragged into this war because of the presence of American military bases though. Yes, we need them for our external defense projections, but they also serve as attractors or magnets of Chinese aggression. That explains why our government is doing a very delicate balancing act.
And those from the previous administration may never understand or may never even accept this. Why? Because they are parasites. They just want to kill their fellow Filipinos or afflict them with their ideological venom that promotes hate and violence. Eventually, the people will surely dispel them from their systems.
Marcos junior, our president, is doing the right thing.
