The last nine months

For the next nine months, forget the grand investment plans crafted by the government technocrats. They would merely drain whatever limited investment funds the state has. They are about long-gestating projects; no fruits within the short term. They would favor cronies and Big Business.

In lieu, the last nine months of President Arroyo should invest on traditional and frontier areas that can be adequately funded, can generate dramatic results within the short-term and are about pulling those at the bottom into the economic mainstream. Setting the investment priorities is not that tough. Remember what Ben Bernake said: the work of the US Fed is not mysterious at all. Others just pretend it is like making decisions from a special, learned perch but it is not so.

The first and most important area is workers’ training and retraining. There are four special job categories in the overseas job market where supply has dried up and which prospective employers are in a mad rush to fill up. These are:

Welders, especially for shipyards and high-end construction work.

Oil rig workers, especially those tasked to clean clogged oil platforms.

Butchers (though trained along modern practices and fit to work in First World abattoirs).

Network engineers and systems administrators.

The DepEd, Tesda and the DOLE should be given a special P1 billion fund for the training and retraining of young people for the first three job categories under this special program. This will be enough. Three to six months of training/retraining plus the requisite apprenticeship is required. After a maximum of six months, the trainees can set forth into the employment world with the certainty that 95 per cent of them would get overseas employment and with pay scales that range from moderate to fantastic.

Those who follow global employment trends know how tough it is to get good recruits in these three job categories.

The 4th job category requires a longer training and retraining period, one year at the very least. And trainees who aim to specialize in this fourth job category should be college graduates well-versed with logarithm. Those who flunked Math 1 need not apply.

A state-sponsored training program should be aimed at pooling a substantial number of engineering, math and physics graduates now languishing in low-paying or call-center jobs to have a critical mass for this specialized training program.

There are two fields of specialization: network engineering or systems administration. Once out of the training system, the young men and women trained should aim at getting certifications. The global network giant CISCO grants certifications to those who can pass its tough exams. The CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Assistant) and the CCNP (Cisco Certified Network Professional) are the coveted certifications.

The Middle East alone cannot get enough of certified network administrators and network engineers. Even North America has been pirating local professionals in these two fields by dangling work visas and a starting rate of $50,000 a year.

In addition, there should be a skills upgrading program for construction workers that are about to apply in droves for job openings in Guam. This also requires very little funding.

Expand the crop insurance program

Another sound investment area is the expansion of crop insurance program of government. High-value crops and hog and poultry should be included in the crop insurance program, on top of the guarantee program for rice and corn. My peasant group—Butil—has written President Arroyo to request for the allocation of a portion of the Malampaya proceeds (about close to P5 billion) that is now with the Land Bank of the Philippines to fund an expanded crop insurance program.

The money from Malampaya is being used by the LBP as a agricultural guarantee fund. So using part of it for an expanded crop insurance program would be seamless and smooth—free of legal and procedural hassles.

How would this move the economy? With an insurance against infestations, hog and poultry raisers will invest more, expand their capacities, modernize their milling facilities and even venture into raising their feed stock.

This would lead to an overnight surge in rural economic activities. More, the government need not drain its limited investment money for this—just a shifting of the money from the LBP’s guarantee fund to crop insurance.

To complement this, the national government can prop up its agricultural R and D (research and development) fund by at least P1 billion to bankroll a furious and intensive research on animal health and animal sciences. This will not only benefit the sunshine subsectors of hog and poultry. This will be a frontline effort against swine flu and the like.

The last nine months of President Arroyo should be nine months well spent. And spending should be on areas that would boost our economy the most but with the investment at the barest minimum.–Marlen V. Ronquillo, Manila Times

mvrong@yahoo.com