DOMAIN OF WEALTH OF NATIONS: BOTH DOMESTIC & OVERSEAS

Erle Frayne Argonza

 

[Writ 23 March 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]

 

 

The antiquated debate regarding which domain should be the main source of national wealth—whether domestic or overseas—is still alive today. In the article of New Nationalism, I argued that in the emerging context of post-industrialism, this debate has become futile and unproductive. Instead of stressing a domestic versus international mindset, I argued for a both/and frame.

 

Admittedly, the overseas domain as a source of wealth is as palatable as it used to be during the era yet of the city-states of Northern Italy (Venice, Florence). This has become the backbone of mercantilism, which in turn became the backbone of nationalist economics. Old Nationalism henceforth carried the pro-mercantilist banner of seeking wealth primarily from international operations. But this time around, this position has to be revised in the light of import-substitution success.

 

In the Philippine case, we have been having it both ways. On the one hand, our manufacturing sector’s products are largely consumed 86% of the time for the domestic market, indicating the optimization of the import-substitution aspect of our development efforts. On the other hand, our overseas employment and investments have been churning out a whopping Net Factor Income from Abroad or NFIA worth 11% of the GDP.

 

New Nationalism, to my mind, should rather have it both ways, as culled from this and other parallel experiences in emerging markets. At this time particularly, Foreign Direct Investments or FDIs by Philippine-owned or controlled companies has begun to take off and contribute to our national coffers. Add to this our exports worth 40% of GDP, and remittances from labor export of worth 10% of GDP, and one can see the broad picture of the potency of the overseas domain as source of national income.

 

Below is the entire subsection on the domains of wealth production culled from the New Nationalism article.

 

Generate wealth from both external and domestic markets.

 

Various stakeholders in the past were divided along the question of what should be the driver of growth & development (demand-side discourse): the external, or internal market? The followers of the ‘externalists’ were the ones behind the export-oriented development strategy, whose rationalizations for massive exports were quite poor recycles of the mercantilist contention that wealth should be produced more from out of the external markets (colonies during the time of empires). The ‘internalists’ were the ones behind import-substitution strategies, whose rationalizations were poor photocopies of Keynesian demand-side formulations.

 

In today’s context, it is wiser to view both the external and domestic markets as synergistic spheres for accumulating national wealth and meeting head-on the demands for delivering welfare. The external market discourse can work only in circumstances where a domestic demand has failed to develop, which in our case was the pre-1990s economy. By the late 1990s, it was clear that a significant change had taken place on the demand side of our economy, as folks were buying a lot of articles of commerce at a time of crisis. The middle class population is rising relative to the entire population, whose households’ needs have become more differentiated and have leaped beyond the bounds of ‘rice-and-galunggong’ expenditures. Today, Filipino families purchase around fifty-three percentum (53%) of their household needs from supermarkets, malls and large retail centers, even as the wet markets and sari-sari stores are declining in importance. These changes are real, and we cannot be blind to them by continuing to harp on an export-driven growth.

 

We must then fast-track large-scale redistribution schemes, such as to witness the rise in purchasing powers of our own people. This cannot be done outright during the next three (3) years, as we face a fiscal dilemma of crisis proportions. But beyond 2007 lies new opportunity fields. The fiscal route to stabilization will have been solidly achieved by then, and the nation can embark on more ambitious endeavors aimed at increasing incomes, reducing unemployment and poverty and increasing domestic consumption.

 

As the domestic market catches up in stabilizing the economy and producing national wealth, stakeholders shouldn’t be remiss in improving the competitiveness of our export products. Our great advantage is that we have ample supplies of skilled labor, with wages still relatively low. The power sector is also quite rich in supply of electricity, even as new projects are now being planned to neutralize possible supply problems in the short run. Hopefully, power supply would stabilize and electricity cost would decrease, contributing thus to rendering our exportable articles more competitive enough. Save for capital goods and petroleum, large volumes of which our producers continue to import, the other factors of production are within our hands to control and manipulate, inclusive of rent and interest rate. It is hereby argued that, with such factors controllable enough, we can optimize conditions for rendering our exportable articles maximally competitive and continue to permit the external market to be a source of substantial wealth. What more if we produce all of our essential capital goods, thus further bringing down the cost of production, given that the price of other factor inputs also go down?

 

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