Deal or no deal the poor awaits a bailout

 
In the Philippines, being chosen to play in a TV game show such as Deal or No Deal is a chance of a lifetime.  It is common to see contestants, upon hearing they were chosen to play, break into pieces or jump up and down euphorically or go into raptures about god being so good.  Game shows are so big in my country that people stand in line at TV stations day and night, causing traffic jams, hoping and praying to have the chance to choose the briefcase with the million pesos.  And the lotto, oh you won’t believe how many people descend on lotto outlets to bet what little money they have. 

 
For the poor who is without a job or underemployed, and lacking in social protection, there is always hope for a better life because one could lotto one’s way out of poverty. One may be desperate today and a millionaire tomorrow.         

 
While news reports state there are hopes that there will be agreement at today’s G20 Summit on tackling tax havens, instituting better international regulation of the banks and increasing resources for the IMF, this may not have much of a resonance for poor people in developing countries that have been living in crisis situation way before the global financial crisis unfolded. Unfortunately, we can’t lotto our way out of the global crisis. And deal or no deal on a new global financial order, the poor will have to wait far longer for a bailout, or may see no bailout at all. Any agreement at the G20 might not become apparent anytime soon. 

 
Yesterday, I went to see the protest action at Threadneedle Street in London. The so-called financial protest turned into violent clashes with the police. Halfway across the world in Manila, an uneventful mobilization of poor people decried the lack of consideration for inequality and economic justice in the G20 summit agenda. “The agenda seem remote as far as the poor people here are concerned because it puts business and capital first before people. Helping poorer nations is seen only in terms of increasing the resources of the IMF,” says Joel Saracho, coordinator of the national coalition of the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) in the Philippines, said in an email.

 
“For us here this means more conditionalities and further indebtedness. Ending poverty in many parts of the world remains the biggest problem. It has to be spelled that way, not in terms of reviving the global economy.  What we want to see is a stimulus package that prioritizes the delivery of the Millennium Development Goals and aid commitments of 0.7% of GNI in the timeframe promised,” added Saracho.

 
Indeed, the G20 agenda seems remote for the poor in developing countries because issues important to developing countries have nothing to do with banks closing but with the rise in commodity prices, contraction of trade and manufacturing, decline in remittances, and diminishing aid budgets. Duncan Green of Oxfam International underscored this during the G20 Voice bloggers’ briefing held at Westminster Central Hall yesterday.

 
In the Philippines, remittances from so-called Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW), is the country’s most stable source of foreign exchange as Filipinos continue to go overseas in record numbers to work. More than a million families rely on these remittances as their main source of income. Now, as less and less Filipino workers are able to get employment in the usual overseas labor destinations and many of those who have been working overseas are displaced and sent back home, remittance flows are weakening. Household incomes are expected to suffer and soon sales of consumer goods and services, as well as residential real estate will be affected. Frankly, it’s a setback the country will have real difficulty in dealing with.  Already, the price of rice has risen 50% as a result of the food and oil crises in the past year. At least nine million Filipinos, a tenth of the total population, are either underemployed or looking for jobs, and the number is increasing.

 
Unfortunately, the government’s 330-billion-pesos-infrastructure-heavy stimulus package is too little compared to other countries and details of how it is to be implemented remain unclear. Also, some of the items of the package are not stimulus in the strict sense of the word as they form part of ordinary government spending.

 
The much-vaunted conditional cash transfer program to help the poor currently covers only 300,000 poor families that have elementary school-age children.  According to the Institute for Popular Democracy (IPD), the program needs to be expanded immediately such that it will cover not just those families with elementary school-age children, but also the 14 percent of poor families that have children that are high school-age.

“We also do not want high school children being pulled into construction work at this time if there is a way to keep them in school. Youth who are unable to finish high school take three times longer to find work, if they manage to find work at all,” said Jude H. Esguerra, executive director of the Institute for Popular Democracy (IPD), a policy research organization working with urban poor coalitions in the Philippines campaigning for social protection for the poor as a response to the crisis.#