Building on our strengths for Filipinos

June 19, 2024

MANILA – Most of us know that our country had steadily moved from top to bottom among our peer neighbors over the past 60 years. A video going around social media shows evolving graphs of how Southeast Asian economies ranked according to average income (GDP per capita) from 1960 to 2022, using World Bank data. In 1960, Singapore was on top with $428, while we were second at $264. Our total GDP was nearly 10 times that of Singapore then, but shared by 27 million people, against Singapore’s 1.7 million. In 2022, tiny Singapore’s total GDP ($467 billion) already exceeded ours ($404 billion). But with less than six million people, their average income is now about 24 times ours, when it was only 1.6 times in 1960.

To continue the story of the video, Malaysia overtook us in average income by 1962. Oil-rich Brunei, with an average income twice Singapore’s, took top position in 1965 when the World Bank started tracking its GDP. Then Thailand overtook us in 1983, Indonesia went ahead in 2004, and as of 2022, Vietnam has passed us as well. The only Asean countries doing worse than us now are Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar.

It’s easy to get a sense of helplessness and hopelessness about our country, seeing how we sank lower and lower over the decades, almost as if it’s unstoppable. And unless we do something different to arrest past trends, we just might find Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar passing us, too. Most analysts blame our politicians and the bad governance that our deteriorating politics and institutions have led to. We often hear it said that we get the leaders we deserve; we vote them into power, after all. Many cite the example of how our Senate has degenerated from the august body it once was with respected