Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia said on Friday, October 21, that what the Duterte administration is really doing is broadening our economic relations with other countries, not cut ties with the US.
This means the country’s business process outsourcing, which is supported mostly by US-based companies, won’t be negatively affected by the misreading of President Rodrigo Duterte’s pronouncements about separating from the US.
Duterte was said to have alarmed the international community after announcing during his first state visit to Beijing that he was separating from the US.
“I announce my separation from the United States both in the military but economics also. So please you have another problem of economics in my country,” the GMA News quoted Duterte as saying in Beijing. Duterte added that, “I have separated from them so I will be dependent on you (China) for a long time but don’t worry we will also help.”
Some sectors feared the rift with the US created by Duterte’s pronouncements may cause adverse repercussions on investments, especially if US companies pullout of the country. Senator Sergio Osmena III aired his concern about the BPO industry in the country being affected, considering that it employs more than one million Filipinos.
But after a few days, however, Duterte backtracked on his statement and said he wasn’t really cutting ties with the US. “It is not severance of ties. When you say severance of ties, you cut diplomatic relations. I cannot do that,” Duterte told news reporters during a midnight news conference in Davao City. “It’s in the best interest of my countrymen to maintain that relationship,” he added.
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Consequently, Pernia sought to pacify fears that PH-US ties have really ended and that US companies would totally withdraw from the country. Other people are concerned about the economic partnership between the two countries. But Pernia assured everyone that it was all merely a re-balancing of trade relations, this time not just with the US but also with China.
“BPOs will continue. BPOs will not be touched. They have provided us with foreign exchange and it’s now even higher than or it’s going to be higher than OFW (overseas Filipino worker) remittances,” the Socioeconomic secretary said.
And by “re-balance,” Pernia meant re-adjusting our foreign trade policy from having “too much dependence (on) the West to (considering) the Asian region,” considering that Asia is the growth region in these present times, he added.
“China is a major player in this growth area. And for a long time, we have not taken very seriously our economic relations with China. This time, we feel we should really engage with China stronger,” Pernia said.
“In effect, we are really broadening our investment and trade base from too much dependence on the West to greater attention to the Asian region,” the secretary re-emphasized.
“So it is a rebalancing,” Pernia clarified. “It is not a separation. It is a rebalancing of economic relations to a broader base of trade and investment relations.”
Moreover, Pernia assured that Duterte’s economic team always has the last word on trade policies, no matter what Duterte’s pronouncements may be or how they are misinterpreted.
“The President has a strong economic team, very solid economic team. And whatever economic pronouncement, it’s really the economic team that makes the final say,” he said.
“We will maintain our ties with the West, Europe, with Japan of course, and the US, the Latin America, and even African countries. The more relations you have in different parts of the world, the better for the economy,” Pernia assured.
In principle, what Duterte really meant in his speech in Beijing, according to Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay, Jr., was that colonial mentality would end as far as our trade and military relations with the US are concerned.
“He had been saying this all along. This was the core of his message. We are separating from that colonial mentality that has impeded our investments and our growth,” Yasay said.
Source: (gmanetwork.com, npr.org, cnbc.com)
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