The New Administration and the New Economic Program in the Philippines

new administration in the Philippines has produced yet another economic plan. country's post-war economic history has been studded with a succession of such plans, none of them fully, some not even partially, implemented. new one, The Five Year Integrated SocioEconomic Program for the Philippines,1 is perhaps more authoritative and interesting than its predecessors. It has the full backing of the President which most of the previous plans lacked. It is also based explicitly, at least in its economic aspects, on a philosophy of free enterprise. Program's diagnosis of the economic situation stems from the view that the rate of economic growth is insufficient. Since the war, the Philippines has been favored economically by a number of factors, including a strong and stable world market for copra, and the collection of war damage payments from the United States. But the outlook is now less promising. In the decade 1950-1959, the gross domestic product grew at a compound rate of 6.3% per annum, but in the last two years of the decade and in 1960, the rate of growth fell. Increase in national income per head is limited by the high annual rate of population growth-over 3 %. While much of the investment, 1950-1959, was in processing and packaging industries near Manila, new investment will have to be largely in mining, agriculture and forestry, which will involve the use of heavy equipment for making roads and provisions for irrigation and forest-clearing. As a result, in the future it will require an investment of from 2.5 to 3 pesos to add a value of one peso to the national output, in contrast to the 1950-1959 period when an investment of only 1.36 pesos was necessary. Program sets a number of rather ambitious targets, without saying in detail how they are to be attained. annual growth rate of the gross domestic product is to rise from 5.5% (1962-3) to 7% (1966-7). targets aim, by 1967, at a rise of a third in current expenditures and a 2.5 times increase in the capital budget over 1960-1. Between 1959 and 1967, the numbers employed are to grow from just under 9 million to just over 11.5 million, and by 1967 only about 5.5% of those seeking work will be unemployed, compared with about 90o in 1961. An early, and most dramatic administration measure was to end exchange control on the ground that it had become a cesspool of corruption

Administration (probate law · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Political science · Philippine History and Culture