Pinoys head home to reap fruits of reform

Janice Ang is packing her bags to return home to the Philippines.
The live-in-caregiver from the Vancouver area and her janitor husband have for the past five years been sending home everything they can to support their children, who live on the outskirts of Manila.
“I think it’s time to go back…there seems to be more opportunity there,” said Ang.
Ang’s oldest son has used some of the money sent home by his parents to open a small food business.
“From what we hear it’s doing well, partly because the country is doing well..this seems like the opportunity we have been waiting for,” she said.
Like Ang, there is a silent exodus in the Overseas Filipino migrant worker community as a group of like-minded Filipinos return home, a sign of confidence in an economy that for decades has seen millions leave in search of better prospects overseas.
As the Southeast Asian nation and its people around the world get ready for the 115th Independence Day celebrations, the economy in the Philippines is booming.
“The Philippines is booming at the moment, so I thought it was the right time to go back,” said 
Mateo Ragonjan, the executive sous-chef of a seven-star luxury hotel in Abu Dhabi packed his bags to take up a similar job back home in the Philippines. 
Ragonjan now helps run a 300-man kitchen that caters to guests and high-rollers flocking to Manila’s newest and most luxurious casino resort, one of 400 overseas Filipinos who came home to work at the Solaire Resort & Casino in Manila Bay, developed at a cost of US$1.2 billion.
The Philippines economy is leaving behind its reputation as a regional laggard. Last week, it reported annual GDP growth of 7.8 per cent in the first three months of the year, outstripping China to make it Asia’s fastest-growing economy.
Earlier this year, the government secured an investment grade credit rating, reducing its borrowing costs, while the stock market has reached a series of record highs this year.
Returnees like Ragonjan are just a trickle compared to those still leaving the country, but the hope is that the more the country can draw the diaspora back to the Philippines the more that the entrepreneurial spirit that prompted them to leave in the first place can add fuel to the economy.
Nearly two million Filipinos left last year to take on jobs such as seafarers, maids, labourers, hotel staff, and medical workers, forming one of the world’s largest diasporas of nearly 10 million migrants, about a tenth of the population.
The returnees are limited for now to a few sectors, including entertainment, tourism and information technology, but some hope that it marks the start of a stronger flow.
“I am seeing the trend happening,” said venture capitalist Francisco Sandejas, who as head of the Brain Gain Network, an online platform connecting professional Filipinos overseas to develop business ideas in the Philippines, has been campaigning for more job creation at home for two decades.
“I am just seeing that now it is much easier to convince people to come home, it was never easy and it is still not easy... people are very optimistic about the next three years,” he added, referring to the remainder of President Benigno Aquino’s six-year term.
Ragonjan said part of his decision to return to the Philippines was because there seemed to be more opportunity than in the past. He says his base salary in Manila is higher than it was in Abu Dhabi.
“If the Philippines continues to grow like this, it can help a lot of Filipinos here. It is good to be back,” he said.
The Philippines’ call centre industry, the world’s biggest, continues to grow strongly and the country is also home to small but expanding software and information-technology firms. The country’s business process outsourcing industry is expected to employ 1.3 million people by 2016, up from 640,000 in 2011.
Earl Valencia, a former business incubation manager at Cisco Systems in California, came home with his family two years ago to help co-found a business incubator and accelerator company in Manila to support start-ups and tech entrepreneurs.
“There were a lot of things to anchor me in the United States, but there were also a lot of economic attractions in this part of the world,” said the 30-year old.
To turn the trickle of returnees into a flood, officials acknowledge the economic boom needs to be more broad-based.
Some sceptics say the boom is mostly benefitting the country’s entrenched elite, with little trickling down to alleviate a poverty rate that has remained stubbornly high near 30 per cent, far from the 17 per cent Aquino hopes to achieve by the time is he due to leave office in 2016.
Per capita GDP was 6.1 per cent greater in the first quarter than a year earlier, the highest in at least two years. But official unemployment remained stubbornly high at 7.1 per cent as of January, the highest in Southeast Asia.
“Growth is not resulting in the creation of more jobs because the growing sectors are not really labour intensive,” said former budget secretary Benjamin Diokno.
“We really need to revive manufacturing. We can do more.”
In one promising sign, manufacturing grew in the first quarter by 9.7 per cent over a year earlier despite sluggish export demand. Capital formation, a measure of investment, jumped 48 per cent as the private sector expanded capacity to meet domestic demand, which is partly fuelled by funds sent home by overseas Filipinos.
In the latest World Competitiveness Report by the Swiss-based Institute for Management Development, the Philippines moved up five places to 43 out of 60 economies, overtaking Indonesia and India.
“I really hope that our government will open more opportunities here, more reasons for our OFWs to come home.” Rosario Chavez, a gaming manager at Solaire, who spent three decades abroad.
As the Philippines’ 115th Independence Day draws near, Filipinos abroad were urged to practice this year’s theme of “ambagan,” or having the community come together for a single purpose.
In the United States, Ambassador to Washington Jose Cuisia Jr. said Filipinos should heed this year’s theme “Kalayaan 2013: Ambagan Tungo sa Malawakang Kaunlaran” and help ensure that all Filipinos benefit from the Philippines’ economic gains.
“With this year’s theme, each one of us is called upon to do our share to ensure that our development is sustained, and its fruits are enjoyed by the most number of people.  It is imperative that we join hands and march alongside one another toward an era of even greater stability and equitable progress,” Cuisia said in his Independence Day message.
Cuisia said this year’s theme is “particularly appropriate” in the context of the “good news” emanating from the Philippines, which he said continues to “perform beyond expectations with unprecedented growth figures.”
“The country is reaping the fruits from reforms being instituted pursuant to the Aquino Administration’s program of good governance,” he said.
He added the recently concluded May 13 elections “not just reflects the vibrancy of our democracy, but the faith voters have placed in the government’s agenda.”
 
Leave a comment
FACEBOOK TWITTER