Privilege Speech Congressman Roilo Golez, 2nd District of Parañaque City 6 September 2004
RETURN TO OPTIMISM: PROUD TO BE PINOY

Two weeks ago, I attended an international conference where I had an interesting conversation with a delegate from South Korea, Min Byoung II, Editorial Director of the Seoul Times. After some pleasantries, he said: “You know, I visited the Philippines for the first time in 1969. That time, the Philippines was second only to Japan in economic development. We Koreans used to look up to you as a model of economic strength.”

That comment cast a pall of sadness in my heart. He was indeed very correct. I remember talking, around the same time that Min Byoung II was here in 1969, to another South Korean, Duck Won Cho, who was with me at the U.S. Naval Academy, one year behind me and like me was a foreign national studying at Annapolis. He told me at that time that South Korea was struggling to rise from the ashes of the devastating Korean War of the early 50s and expressed envy at how much ahead we were of his country.

That was around thirty five years ago. Now, the situation of the Philippines and South Korea has been reversed drastically. Those generations, who know only the Philippines and South Korea today, cannot feel what I feel now, having known how it was to be no. 2 in Asia in the 60s and early 70s and how it is now when South Korea towers over us, with even several big business groups individually having a budget bigger than our national budget.

That’s the sad and bad news that we have to live with today.

But dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, let us not despair and give up. We should not despair even amidst all these talks about a fiscal crisis because there are so many things that we should rejoice and be proud to be Pinoy.

Let’s look at foreign direct investments which are lead indicators of what are in store for us in the coming few months and years.

The National Statistical Coordination Board announced recently that the investment climate has turned bullish in the first quarter of 2004. And that’s because Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) shot up from only P6.3 Billion during the first quarter of last year to a dizzying P115.4 Billion during the first quarter of this year!

The gas industry …. power ….. emerged as the top recipient of FDI from January to March, followed by the manufacturing industry. Most of the approved ventures in manufacturing were in the production of accessories used in information and communications technology (ICT) sector, spare parts and equipment. The ICT sector got P14.4 Billion, more than five times the P2.6 Billion it got for the same period last year.

In a survey late last year, in spite of all the negative political and economic news, 87% of business leaders expressed optimism about the economy in the next three years. 75% of
those surveyed were from Filipino-owned companies while 25% were from foreign companies, representing different industries such as banking, manufacturing, services, real estate, pharmaceuticals, trading, education, utilities, construction and logistics.

68% believe their companies will be more profitable in 2004 than in 2003.

As we talk about the deficit, there are also lots of positive news in the fight to close the gap between government revenue and expenses.

The BIR has reported that the P130 Billion second quarter revenue collections exceeded by
P29 billion the P100 Billion collected for the first quarter.

The Bureau of Customs just reported that their collections for the first semester of 2004 amounting to P60.5 Billion exceeded by 14.2% their collections for the same semester last year.

Overall, our economic fundamentals remain very strong with a GDP growth of 4.5%.

In a paper presented in an international conference, former Japan Labor minister Tetsou Kondo cited the Philippines as among Asia’s four strongest economies as shown by our high GDP growth.

That expert observation is supported by many indicators staring at us now.

For example, Special Economic Zone exports reached US$15.334 billion in the first half of 2004, representing a 19.44% increase over the same period last year.

The export engine is indeed humming but many don’t seem to hear.

Most of the aforementioned exports came from private ecozones whose first semester figures reached US$11.944 billion, representing a 22.05% jump over the same period last year.

Of the P27.245 billion investments for the first semester this year, P4.03 billion went to information technology, jumping over last year’s level of only P1.686 billion, representing a 139% increase in IT investments.

The investments that came in during the first half of this year created direct employment for 394,237 workers and indirect employment for 591,355 workers.

We should be proud to be Pinoys. We have made world class achievements in various fields.

We are growing fast as a call center hub. We are now no. 3 in the world, next only to India and China.

The Philippines ranks No. 4 worldwide in competence and skills for the information and communications technology (ICT), per survey of a US-based company, the Meta Group. India tops the survey, followed by Israel and Iceland. The survey stated that the Philippines beat developed countries like the US, Canada, France and Australia in producing ICT professionals and workers.

Intel has been in the Philippines for 28 years and its Philippine plant is where its most advanced products are launched, particularly Pentium IV. We can claim that a Pinoy product is the spark plug of most of the millions of modern PCs now being used worldwide.

Texas Instruments in Baguio produces the DSP chips that are the brains behind a cellphone. I understand that this Pinoy product powers 100% of all Nokia cellphones and 80% of Erickson cellphones!

The very high end Toshiba laptops are produced in Laguna.

Panasonic in Sta. Rosa, Laguna manufactures millions of cellphones exported worldwide.

If you are driving a Benz or a BMW or a Volvo, it is very likely that the ABS system in your car was made in the Philippines.

Mitsubishi Motors will reportedly transform the Philippines as their production hub for spare parts and components for Mitsubishi and Daimler-Chrysler vehicles.

Trend Micro, makers of the top anti-virus software PC-Cillin develops its cures for viruses in Eastwood Libis. When a new virus is detected, the Eastwood Libis team tries to find a solution within 45 minutes.

The giant high tech company America Online or AOL has 1,000 people in Clark answering 90% of AOL’s global email inquiries.

Proctor and Gamble has over 400 people in Makati (average age is 23 years old) doing backup officer work for their Asian operations including finance, accounting, HR, and payments processing.

Citibank’s global ATM programming is done here in the Philippines.

The semiconductor and electronics industry in the Philippines contributes at least 60% annually to the country’s total export sales. These are diverse products like ICs, discrete semiconductors, semiconductor modules, electronic components, floppy disk drives, CD-ROM technology and computer processors. That’s a far cry from third world products like logs and ores just twenty years ago. And we rank among the best in the world in the manufacture of those high tech products. Seagate, a manufacturer of computer components, operates in the Philippines, as in other countries. When they evaluated the quality of Seagate products, they found those made in the Philippines as the best in quality.

Same with Timex products. There are many Timex plants in other countries aside from the one in Mactan, Cebu. Our Mactan plant is ranked the highest performer among all Timex plants in the world.

We are now exporting cars in quantity. Ford Philippines exported 13,500 cars last year, the Lynx and the Escape. It expects to export more than 100,000 units in the next five years.

And Pinoys are doing well abroad. We have 8 million overseas Filipino workers who contribute to the economy of their host countries in a number of fields from the low tech to the high tech.

In a way the sun never sets on Pinoys.

214,000 Pinoy seamen and merchant marine officers have strengthened the world’s maritime industry. Practically every major oceangoing ship has a Pinoy seaman.

Many companies in Indonesia are managed by Pinoys.

Banks and sophisticated financial institutions in Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore, London and New York have Pinoys occupying key positions.

Pinoy nurses and doctors provide world class health care to citizens of the first world countries.

I was present in the SARS summit of Asian leaders in Bangkok last year when then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong emotionally paid tribute to the competence and heroism of Pinay nurses in Singapore and credited them for saving lives at risk to their own lives.

Many factories in Taiwan, South Korea and Japan depend on highly skilled Pinoy workers.

Many shops in Saudi Arabia prominently display the sign “We have Filipino workers” to attract more customers because Pinoys there have established a reputation for reliability and high standard of work.

And the humble Pinay domestic helpers are trailblazing in their own way in transplanting Pinoy culture in their host countries, influencing the way of life of their host families in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Italy, England, and many more places and leaving an indelible mark on generations of children they take care of.

And a most remarkable phenomenon is now happening in the field of education in the U.S.

A hundred years ago, the U.S. sent hundreds of teachers now called Thomasites to teach Filipinos the three Rs. Now, we have reversed the situation. We are sending not just hundreds but thousands of Pinoy teachers to the U.S. to teach Americans Math, Science and English. Many of these Pinoy teachers are now in California and Texas. U.S. demand for teachers is expected to balloon to two million in the next ten years.

There are many more examples of Pinoy excellence and world class achievement abroad.

We see Veronica Pedrosa every day as a news anchor in CNN. And Pinay Maria Ressa competing with Miss Christian Amanpour in field reports in CNN.

And there’s this former poor boy from Cagayan, Diosdado Banatao, who is now a Pinoy high technology tycoon in Silicon Valley. In 1997 he was honored with the prestigious “Master Entrepreneur of the year “award sponsored by the Ernst & Young global accounting giant, Inc. Magazine and Merrill Lynch. His world class achievement: He introduced a technological innovation, a new chip-set design that produced 10 times more power for the IBM 360 mainframe at a thousandth of the cost. His other technological innovations include: developing the first single-chip; the 16-bit microprocessor-based calculator while working for Commodore; the first system logic chip set for the PC-XT and the PC-AT in the 80’s; and the first Windows accelerator chip while at S3 in the 90s.

There is also Loida Nicolas Lewis who made a big empire that she inherited even bigger showing her world class business leadership, savvy and elan eliciting awe from seasoned and hard-nosed U.S. businessmen who crossed swords with her in board room battles.

And Pinoys in New York, according to a US census, have the highest median income among all ethnic groups, higher than European-Americans, Japanese-Americans and Hispanic-Americans.

There are many more stories of Pinoy extraordinary excellence, all world class.

And many more will follow here and abroad.

That is why we should stop all these negative talks that pervade us when there is so much positive to talk about and celebrate.

What we need to do is go back to the time when we were so positive as a people and positive moments indeed came.

I would like to quote Dr. Cynthia Manabat, Chairperson of C.L. Manabat and Co. the Philippine member firm of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu who said:

The concept of the "self-fulfilling prophesy" of Robert Merton comes to mind. I worry that by repeating and restating our shortcomings and deficiencies, we are inadvertently creating the future we believe is predestined. It has been established that the behavior of the believers must create a positive feedback loop that by itself creates the future events - consequently the people must first believe… It is time that we start believing in the Philippine economy and view our future with confidence, positivism and inspiration. Let me invite you to the future by proclaiming the return of optimism.

Yes, what we need is the return of optimism.

The same brand of optimism that enabled our forefathers in the mountain ranges of what is now Ifugao and Mountain Province to conquer their mountainous environment and carve out the rice terraces a thousand years or more ago to overcome a harsh terrain and allow them to use water optimally for their agriculture, a water-use engineering feat heralded by Western scholars of old civilizations.

The same brand of optimism that in the late 50s brought forth the idea of constructing using Filipino technology and sweat, the Araneta Coliseum which when completed in 1960 was billed as the World's Biggest Dome Coliseum surpassing those in the U.S. and Europe, becoming a monument at that time to the country's engineering prowess.

What we need now is to again dream bigger dreams and conquer our own doubts and skepticism.

And we must start right here in this Chamber which in the past was the cradle of lofty ideas and feisty optimism.

I would like to go back to where I started. My newfound South Korean friend Min Byoung II. The South Korean journey to industrial might started in 1972 when they had the groundbreaking of their Hyundai shipyard, more than twenty years after we were already building our own ships in NASSCO in Bataan.

There were the usual Korean skeptics but the South Korean nation plodded and showed an indomitable spirit to overcome their erstwhile image as a lazy country of drumbeaters.

In just 16 years from being a basket case, they celebrated their triumph by hosting the 1988 Olympics.

They followed the model of Japan, which rose from the ashes of the Second World War to host the 1960 Olympics sixteen years after the end of the War.

You see, it doesn't take long to achieve transformation. That means the dream of becoming a first world country can be achieved within our lifetime, in less than a generation, sixteen years or less. Many of the young Members of the House today will still be in this Chamber. Or one or two could have become President already.

And industrially and technologically we are now in a much better position to take off than where South Korea was when they started their big leap.

Sixteen years from now, we could be hosting the Olympics. Why not?

Our GDP is around number 25 in the world. Our population is around 13th in the world. We are a big nation with a big production capability and we have the right to dream big.

Perhaps what we need is a mind-boggling goal of unprecedented magnitude, such as hosting the Olympics, that can mobilize and rally the nation.

But we must start the Return to Optimism right here in this Chamber, the House of Representatives which historically has been the cradle of big ideas and innovations, more than any other institution of the country.

Please join me in dreaming big dreams.

Thank you.