Underdevelopment in the Philippines

by B.P. Familara (2013)

We live in a country that is struggling to rise from the ashes of poverty. A country that was exploited by the whites for the last four hundred years and undergone a series of wars. We were educated far beyond what is needed for development. Spaniards tough us to be afraid of the friars, memorize prayers, and live with the gospels of the saints. Americans, indeed help us to uplift the kind of life we have today. They introduced public education system that was patterned to them. They make sure that the Filipinos are educated according to their will. The downside of this is that, they miseducate us. They let us forget who we are and forcibly change our customs.

Americans flooded our country by their products and spare no one in making their local business to grow. We became a country of buyers wherein we buy more that we produce. Our economy used to be very dependent to the economy of America, but this path slowly fades nowadays.

On the past centuries, the pillars of economy and socio-political have collapsed that makes the gap between rich and poor wider. The rich becomes richer while the poor becomes poorer.  If we illustrate, we could draw a triangle divided into three. The upper is the rich  /BILL PATRICK FAMILAR (c) /people, the middle is the working class, and the bottoms are the urban and rural poor. The unequal distribution of wealth in our country affects great to the development of our economy. The amount of assets that our economy produces is not enough to follow the level of sophistication of the technology that is being used by the mainstream. The result of this is that our locally made product cannot compete to the world market due to the durability and price differences, imported good often cheaper than homegrown / locally produced goods, that often resulting to bankruptcy of local businesses.

This event creates a vicious circle or what other may say, poverty trap. We study hard, but when we graduate there are lesser opportunities on the field that can be found in our country. It is for the reason that we have a mismatch labor force in our society. We produce more scholastic graduates like accountants, engineers, nurses, and ITs but what our country really needs are the skilled labor force that can easily fit in to the needs of in the country and overseas.