RP's sharp productivity drop and the COMSTE

Labor productivity in Southeast Asia has become stagnant compared to the rest of Asia and lags far behind that of the developed world, said the International Labor Organization (ILO) in a recent report. It stressed that a major cause of world poverty is waste of workers' productive potential.

Productivity is measured in output per employed person. Increase in productivity is mainly the result of combining capital, labour and technology. A lack of investment in people - training and skills - as well as equipment and technology can lead to an underutilization of the labor potential in the world.

Singapore is the most productive country among the members of ASEAN with $47,975 of value added by each person employed. It is followed by Malaysia at $22,112, Thailand at $13,915, Indonesia at $9,022 and the Philippines at $7,271. The Philippines comes out as the most laggard among the original member countries of the ASEAN that now includes Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.

By comparison, East Asia's workers (Japan, South Korea and China) now produce twice as much as they did ten years ago. The productivity of South Asia, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan and India rose by 50% during the same decade.

The US still leads the world in labor productivity with $63,885 value added per worker. Its increased productivity has to do with the ICT revolution, with the high level of competition in the country, and with the extension of trade and investment abroad.

We must do emergency action to rescue Philippine labor productivity from the bottom of the heap. Congress created early this year the Congressional Commission on Science and Technology (COMSTE) to review and assess the state of science, technology and engineering R&D in the country.

The COMSTE will then submit its findings and draft a master plan, similar to EdCom which I chaired in the early 90's, laying down a framework for urgent upgrading of these disciplines which ungird an innovation society.

Only world-class competitiveness, which can be attained by building a pool of world-class workforce skilled in science and technology, can provide the quantum push to labor productivity.