Uncertainty Hounds As Eastern Visayas Breaks Away From The Past

 

BIMBO CABIDOG

The people of Eastern Visayas inhabit a land rich in natural resources. The region has a vast land area. Samar alone is the third largest island of the Philippine archipelago. All three major land masses have sizeable portions of alluvial soil and vegetative covers replete with various forest products. The mantle beneath contains precious minerals from chrome to copper, nickel and gold.

It is apparently a great irony that despite the trove of natural wealth complemented by a highly literate and talented populace, Eastern Visayas would yet place third among the poorest regions in the country. Undeniably, EV’s per capita Gross Regional Domestic Product bears this official categorization out. The reality has always accompanied it even up to recent years.

The question now is: how long will the region languish in this state? What are its development prospects over the near or far future?

Lay observers as well as experts find much reason to be optimistic in what they see today. The Eastern Visayas projects a community about to break away from the past. The region is undoubtedly several degrees different now than two decades ago. Physical change shows them out. But economic figures also tell of a region that has improved a lot in productivity and performance.

Woes from burgeoning urban sprawls, newfound prosperity easily translating to acquisitions like the buying of cars, and rapid modernization are likewise catching up. Vehicular traffic in thoroughfares, for one, has become an emerging headache. For sure, the volume of private vehicles as well as PUVs on roads has dramatically increased from, say, ten years ago.

Region 8’s economy grew fastest in 2016, besting the other 17 regions, and exceeding even the growth rate posted by the National Capital Region and the national average. The Philippine Statistics Authority recorded the Gross Regional Domestic Product to have surged by 12.4 percent in the said year outpacing the NCR’s growth rate of 7.5 percent and the national average’s 6.9 percent.

A strong performance by the industry sector boosted the record growth of the GRDP. Production here went up by 20.2 percent accounting for 44.3 percent of the local economy. Construction, one of the industry’s vital subsectors, grew by a most impressive 44.5 percent. Manufacturing grew by 19.6 percent. Construction and manufacturing carried the region’s upsurge.

A bank analyst attributed the performance to the rehabilitation efforts that have been going on since the destruction wrought by Supertyphoon Yolanda. They had just about picked up around this time. But being the case, there was also fear that the record growth may not be sustained. Once the post-Yolanda rebuilding tapers, the Eastern Visayas may just have nothing anymore to fuel further progress. Declining growth can supersede the productivity boom and dampen its psychological boost.

The case at once became true with the dip in GRDP, which only grew by 1.8 percent, the following year. By 2018, this would only recover by 5.9 percent. What saved the disheartening fall was the services sector. While industrial performance slowed, services accelerated by 10.5 percent, accounting for 44.4 percent of the regional economy. They also employed about 53 percent of the labor force.

An ocular survey would show the figures in concrete. The rise of the services sector owed to the proliferation of retail outlets, hotels, restaurants and food store chains which are readily seen around the boom cities and towns. The GRDP growth would also stem from the increase in the volume of flights and airline passengers, the former by 28 percent and the latter by 25 percent.

In another breadth, the weight of annual domestic cargo and cargo throughput rose by almost 22 percent. This indicated the invigoration of trade. But agriculture was a let-down. While industrial firms absorbed only 15 percent of the labor force, their output would be eight times more than that of agriculture which accounted for 31.5 percent of the labor force. The sector declined to 0.5 percent in 2018, down from 1.0 growth in 2017.

The recorded ups and downs show yet an unstable status. Eastern Visayas had a long way to go, and there was much left to be desired. Its per capita RGDP of PhP37,121 in 2017 and PhP38,598 in 2018 still fell way below the national average of PhP86,270. These presented third lowest in the country.

Bright Scenarios

What scenarios offer optimistic prospects on the region’s socio-economic development?

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas in an economic assessment nationwide reported that Eastern Visayas, first and foremost looks into an influx of tourists, a host of them on high-end expeditions of cruise ships going to such exquisite destinations as Limasawa, Capul, Kalanggaman and Cuatro Islas. The region also expects thousands of guests to come and take part in the celebration of the Leyte Landing Anniversary every year.

The BSP further reports that the region sees new investments, for instance, in the construction of hotels, banks and fast food chains. These generate revenues and jobs. The posh Summit Hotel has been newly built in Tacloban City and begun operation. The franchise mall of SM Prime Holdings Inc. in Ormoc City also has finished construction and opened.

The 7-Eleven convenience store chain has come to Ormoc, Palo and Tacloban depicting a rosy picture of the regional market base for retail of its kind. The promising market sets the stage for the rise of more micro-, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).  

The proposed establishment of the Leyte Ecological Industrial Zone (LEIZ) is at the pre-feasibility study stage. The impact project advances rural industrialization, adopts and intensifies industry clustering, and introduces competitive as well as resilient industries.

In IT, guest hosting services, fast food and retail, the region is creating business models unimagined twenty years ago. Though initially hesitating and sputtering, these new engines of growth have set Eastern Visayas on a dynamic and vibrant course of development.

The bright scenarios could however prove illusory under the current situation. All these have slammed into the COVID 19 pandemic and drift in turbulent straits after five months of economically strangulating lockdowns. Now, with an open-ended crisis in public health getting much worse than better, everything has become uncertain.