Philippines joins global drumbeating of World Fair Trade calls Vs. unfair competition, poverty
RP has so many foreign investors already but it remains poor – Partylist solon


DAVAO CITY, Philippines – Contrary to impression that the country lacked foreign investments, a Partylist representative in Congress insisted on Saturday (May 9) that the Philippines, especially Mindanao, has already “a lot of them but why is it that we remain poor”.

“We have them already here, many of them a long time ago. In Mindanao, you can see them around, in mining, in the plantations. We have a lot of them here contrary to what we usually hear of our leaders always saying that we have to invite foreign investors,” said Rep. Luz Ilagan of the Gabriela Women’s Party.

Ilagan, who spoke during the drumbeating activity here on Saturday of the call of the World Fair Trade movement to stop unfair economic competition and end poverty, told reporters here the “wanton disregard of these foreign companies against the welfare of their host countries in the poor countries have wrought destruction of the environment and rendered crippled local entrepreneurs to develop a strong domestic business sector”.

“Why are we still poor, especially we in Mindanao where these companies have been reaping huge profits from our natural and mineral resources?” she said.

She said that the ill-conceived package of attractions given these companies should be reviewed “because what profit us if they are allowed to repatriate profits from their extraction of our resources and destruction of our environment, if they have not really brought improvement to our localities where they are hosted?”.

“This is the challenge to all of us: let us force our leaders to review our policies, to make investment policies that would protect our local entrepreneurs from unfair competition of foreign investors,” she said.

“Imagine this: foreign companies are allowed tax holidays and enjoyment of the land for 25 years while our local businessman are hardly assisted even to process their legal and business documents,” she said.

She said that the challenge “becomes all the more pressing because our own President is going around the world to convince leaders to accept our labor”.

“Overseas labor was supposed to be a temporary policy in the 1970’s but our leaders through the years have become so indolent as to be comfortable enough not to change it and adapt it as permanent policy,” she said.

Ilagan said that the call of the Word Fair Trade to stop unfair global competition between and among rich and poor countries, and their corporations, to improve the fight against poverty, “also find similar aspiration from among local business groups and chambers”.

“Fair trade and treatment is very strong among business groups in the country. We have long heard of them complaining about special treatment to foreign investors,” she said.

She added that the same advocacy could be gleaned from the local government units “which have been complaining also that they were not being paid well of the proper taxes accrued by these foreign companies which pay directly to the national capital region, and repatriate the biggest bulk of their profit”.

“Another big challenge for all of us is to force our officials to stop the continuing destruction of the environment because of their special treatment and incentives to companies engaged in extractive activities such as mining,” she added. “They don’t care because they are not from our country.”

“Their main motivation is profit and that is all,” she said.

Ilagan issued a similar appeal to the public who regularly stroll in the People’s Park here during the special late afternoon program to join a global and synchronized activity of the World Fair Trade Day (WFTD).

The Kaliwat Theater Collective, a commercial arts group here, performed songs and drama skits portraying low wages, labor repression and gender discrimation in the workplaces, and revived militancy of some songs in the mid-1980’s.

Ilagan, Councilor Edgar Ibuyan and former Councilor Nenita Orcullo later led the banging of gongs, bamboos and coconut shells “in drumbeating the call of the World Fair Trade Organization to beat poverty, climate change and economic crisis”.

Betty More, executive director of Katakus and organizer of the WFTD Big Bang!! said that Saturday’s activity was joined by similar cultural, political and economic gatherings in many cities in the country and 70 other countries.

A primer the group circulated said that the activity “is a human reaction to the World Trade Organization’s failure to beat trade injustice and social and environmental degradation”.

“This is a market response to failure in the financial system that’s left millions more people hungry, homeless, without health care and education,” the primer said.

More said that the global fair trade day activities were also intended to drum up support to the acceptance of a representative from the WFTO to sit in the powerful Group of Eight industrialized nations in the world. “With a WFTO representative, it would become now the G9,” More said.

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