Additional Weblog

I have created a new weblog at www.catanduaneseconomy.blogspot.com. I will still be making contributions to the GC Weblog of course. Setting up a different weblog for the economy is good. It will be devoted on nothing but this one area of our efforts.

EagleEyes

Why The Economy

Our island and for that matter, the whole nation has thousands of challenges that burden all of us. From a very poor economy to corruption, from lack of medical services to widespread hunger, from natural disasters to man-made disasters... you name it, we have it.

Our national and provincial leaders are unable to lift us out of this quagmire. This quagmire has gotten worse over the years. And this has been going on for a very, very long time. While our Asian neighbors prospered, we in the Philippines lagged behind. As one takes a closer look at our economic, political and social situations, it looks like we have got a longer journey to take to even come close to what you and I will consider as progress if we ever achieve any decent amount of progress.

A lot of our leaders have become indifferent to our needs. The old problems persist. Corruption is at its worst. Mismanagement is king. Thieves in many areas are not brought to accountability. Our national debt is so big we are using more than 70% of our national income to pay for the interest on it. A lot of the government owned, government run and managed institutions are bankrupt and eating up your tax money. So unless we have a huge influx of money coming from somewhere to keep as afloat and eventuallly revive our dead economy , indeed we have got a long wait , ladies and gentlemen. The year 2004 showed a 'growth' of our economy that was pegged at more than 6%. How soon will we 'feel' the benefits of this growth if it is real? Not for a long long while. As mentioned above , what little gains we make will be eaten up by a lot of things. The bankrupt institutions, the outstanding loans that eat up a lot of money, then the politicians who eat up tax money through the pork barrel.... all this will make it very hard for us to recover economically.

All is not lost though. As gloomy as everything seems to be, there is still hope for us. It will take you, me , our neighbors, our sisters and brothers, everyone to start turning the tides, that is, the economic tide of our small island. Why the economy? The answer is simple. With an improved economy, most of our ills in society, most of the corruption, most of the hunger will be turned around slowly. This ladies and gentlemen is a huge challenge but it is not impossible . You and I need to take things into our hands and can no longer afford to be just onlookers.

It takes a small rudder to turn a huge ship around. We will try to utilize this concept to do the 'impossible'. By teaming up, Catandunganons who are sick and tired of looking at poverty, can home in on methods, procedures , tools that will slowly, eventually turn the tide in our favor.

Please go to www.catanduaneseconomy.blogspot.com for more information on this issue.
For first time readers please read from the old articles to the present. We will continue to add articles from this end and from readers' responses and suggestions.