Filipino Competitiveness

Congress is carrying out the first big step to reverse the inability of the Philippines, once on top of Asia's most competitive list, to compete with the rest of the world in human and economic competitiveness and erase that dubious distinction as the underachiever of Asia, a senator said today.

Senator Edgardo J. Angara, a former University of the Philippines president, said he and Senator Ramon Magsaysay Jr., are pushing for the creation of a Competitiveness Commission, a bicameral, bipartisan body which shall study what is at the root of out inability to compete and prescribe a broad blueprint on how the country can recapture its once-upon-a-time stellar role as "the teacher of Asia".

Angara and Magsaysay put forward the proposal after global agencies reported that the Philippines has slipped 29 places in the competitiveness ladder and is a certified laggard in its ability to compete in global, highly-competitive environment.

"No country in the world has slipped that rapidly and swiftly," said Angara in a recent television interview.

Angara said that the weak links of a country that cannot compete cover such areas as mediocre educational system, a weak judiciary, poor infrastructure and the inadequacy of people to meet the tough challenges of a global economy.

"The country's inability to compete may be rooted in one or all of these areas and pinpointing which is at the root will precisely be the starting point of the Commission's work," he added.

Angara said that the members of the senate have had initial discussions with engineers and scientists and the deans of leading engineering schools in the country gather inputs for the proposed Commission.

Angara said that he and Magsaysay have agreed to make the slipping competence in the sciences and math as the major focus of the Commission's work.

Angara believes that a people highly-trained in the sciences and math can effectively compete in a knowledge society and young Filipinos are anything but strong in the fields of match and the sciences.

Angara said that in a recent global test on math and science adequacy, Filipino students placed second to the bottom "and this essentially tells the tragic story on where we are in the competitiveness battleground".

Angara was the prime mover behind the three congressional commissions that studied in-depth the problems of Philippine education, the health sector and agriculture sector.

All of the three commissions produced widely-hailed reports that pinpointed the major problems that plagued all the mentioned sectors and prescribed a reform agenda to remedy the sectors' woes.

Angara has a solid track record as serious student of policy and father of sweeping social and economic reforms which he made possible through ground-breaking legislation.