IN MY LINE of work, I have been fortunate enough to travel to many places all over the world, places that make me wonder why the Philippines, or specifically, the Filipino people cannot emulate.
The tourism industry is a sunrise industry in the Philippines: it will continue to grow. But what limits the industry’s growth is its prehistoric public infrastructure.
While the government has a lot of public infra projects which are progressing and developing at a furious rate, it makes me question their full positive effect in the future.
The country’s per capita GDP income is also at the $3,000-level, and despite the peso decreasing in value versus the dollar recently, the rapid growth and boom of the auto industry will continue, thanks to strong economic policies and reforms by the Duterte administration.
And yet, the country’s growth continues to be limited by the massive traffic jams we’re encountering.
Why did the previous administrations fail to see this?
You see, the culture of the Filipino people is one happy with merely meeting the minimum: we are happy to travel our world-class highways at the bare minimum of 60 kph when in fact, we can safely travel at 120 kph. Why is that?
Forget the lane straddlers and idiot drivers, but focus on the speed. Why travel simply at 60kph? In countries like Germany, the United States, Singapore, etc., everyone is right bang on the speed limit. Drivers are trying to get the absolute most out of their time, their vehicles, and their daily activities.
Driving right up to the prescribed maximum speed limit is one of the mundane and simple activities that allow them to maximize everything they have in a day.
But in the Philippines? Nope. Achieving the minimum is OK. Sad. Very sad indeed. And driving slowly does not make you a safer driver.
Scientifically speaking, the safest driving speed is one where you observe the general speed and flow of traffic, and keep pace with it.
Which means the safest speed is not an absolute number, but varies on road and weather conditions, and of course vehicle density on the road.
Another example of simply meeting the minimum? Here’s a good one. Our airports are massively overworked.
If you combine all three international terminals in Metro Manila, that would be maybe one terminal in Singapore or Hong Kong, major Asian hubs for commerce and tourism.
Singapore is already building its fourth terminal in Changgi, even if the three existing ones are not yet fully utilized. Why? Because they foresee and project the future growth in the next 20 years or so.
Us? The typical scenario is this: our airports are at 120 percent capacity, i.e., we need a minimum of at least 20 percent more capacity.
Our government then decides to create another terminal that will meet and handle the much needed 20 percent capacity. It takes five years to do so.
By the time the new terminal is complete, demand would have grown further. The result? We’re still short of airport terminal capacity.
It’s the same story with roads, bridges, highways, flyovers, etc. The government builds these based on current demand, but fails to foresee future demand that is scientifically projected (I’m sure there are still smart people in government who can project future demand based on current socioeconomic conditions).
Once these roads and bridges are finished, it is simply barely enough to satisfy current vehicular traffic. The result? We’re back to square one.
I was at Bali, Indonesia recently. The Indonesian government, led by President Joko Widodo (who is well-loved by the masses, much like our foul-mouthed but very down-to-earth President Duterte), recently completed an extensive elevated highway/bridge network connecting Bali to the islands near it.
The roads and highways were so new, it helped us enjoy the fleet of MINI’s we were driving.
Three years earlier, I was in Bali for another driving event sponsored by a different company, and the difference then and now was truly very dramatic. See what they can do in three years?
What we need is to build infrastructure projects that will satisfy not only the current demand, but will satisfy demand for the next 20 years at the very least.
Future-proofing, or at least to the best of our abilities. Part of future-proofing is to decentralize the capital.
The Clark Green City project is a step in the right direction, and we need more of these projects to woo foreign investors into the Philippines, but away from Metro Manila.
Setting up factories, offices, and BPOs in nearby developing provinces and cities will generate much-needed jobs in these areas, contribute to improving the Filipino’s quality of life, force local government to develop local public infrastructure, decongest the capital, and crucially, help distribute wealth, money and opportunities to everyone, not just a select few.
We also need to move factories, warehouses and educational institutions outside of Metro Manila to cleaner, more sprawling environments and campuses rather than the walled up, air-conditioned buildings where the kids of today are cloistered growing up with no clue of how the outside world is faring.
Why are we not doing this?
Cynics will say that politicians do not like future-proof plans because, well, for lack of a better explanation, they run out of sources of payola if a project, once built, will be good for 20 or so years.
Politicians need continuous projects to keep kickbacks continuously flowing into their pockets. Such a sad, sad situation.
Until the current patron-client relationship in our political system remains, the “meeting the minimum” culture will stay.
They say hindsight is 20/20, and Filipinos have a very resilient nature toward change, which in this case, I feel does not help us at all.
Resilience is good, but failing to plan for the future and simply accepting it sitting down is seriously wrong.
The government, private sector, and all of us should veer away from this culture of tingi-tingi, of sachet-sized and -priced public infrastructure developments.
We should not accept a “isang kahig, isang tuka” culture. We need to really look, plan and develop for the very long term.
This is the only way our nation can grow strong, sustainably.
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