Global Governance and the Reduction of Poverty and Inequality in the Post-MDG Era: How Can the ASEAN-Japan Partnership Contribute?

In 2000, the ASEAN member countries signed the UN Millennium Declaration to eradicate extreme poverty in the world by 2015 through the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs represented the global vision of reducing poverty in its various dimensions, and they were mainstreamed in the process of building the ASEAN Socio-cultural Community, which had a similar target date of 2015.1 The new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework approved in 2015 goes beyond the MDG agenda, which focused solely on poverty, to also include inequality. In recent years, inequality has been worsening amidst rapid economic growth and falling poverty rates. Inequality can reduce the impact of economic growth on poverty reduction. Conversely, reduced inequality will increase the efficiency of poverty reduction. Unequal societies and countries can achieve a high level of growth but cannot sustain it. Thus, addressing inequalities will help in attaining and maintaining growth, which in turn is a necessary condition for reducing poverty. Furthermore, reducing inequality will help in easing social tensions, deepening social capital, and improving peace and order, which are all crucial to poverty reduction, thus also making growth more inclusive. At the heart of the post-2015 framework to address poverty and inequality is the adoption of an inclusive and sustainable growth model. Inclusive growth is growth that is broad based and benefits the majority of the population. One of the primary goals of the ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership signed in 2008 is the establishment of a “framework for the enhancement of economic cooperation among the Parties with a view to supporting ASEAN economic integration, bridging the development gap among ASEAN Member States, and enhancing trade and investment among the Parties.” This was reiterated in the Bali Declaration of 2011, which “reaffirm(ed) the commitment of ASEAN and Japan to work closely in supporting ASEAN integration and narrowing the development gap in the region, and reaffirm(ed) the support of the Government of Japan in the implementation of the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity, with a view to intensifying the flow of trade, investment, tourism and people-to-people interaction.”2 Within this context, the main objective of this chapter is to propose measures for how the ASEAN-Japan partnership can contribute to the global governance of reducing poverty and inequality in the post-MDG era. It attempts to address the following questions: How can the ASEAN-Japan partnership tackle global poverty and inequality to ensure that economic growth is inclusive and benefits the greatest number of people? And how can the ASEAN-Japan partnership contribute to harnessing economic growth for a more equitable distribution of opportunity and income

Assessing the Spillover Effects of FDI to the Philippines

The experience of the Philippines shows that FDI spillover effects are not automatically generated. Opening up the economy to FDI has contributed to the country’s exports of high-technology products and overall economic growth. However, the spillover effects of FDI to domestic firms have remained limited due to the domestic firms’ weak competitiveness and inability to absorb the technology or knowledge being transferred. The government needs to adopt a more comprehensive approach that would combine industrial policy to improve and develop domestic parts and supplier firms with measures to create an environment conducive to the creation and expansion of FDI-related spillovers as well as increase participation in higher segments of industry value chain

Services Liberalization in the Philippines: A Capacity Needs Assessment for AEC 2015

The paper aims to assess and determine the capacity-building needs required to liberalize trade in services in the Philippines. Through the ASEAN Framework Agreement on Services, the Philippines has committed to liberalize various sectors including air transport, maritime transport, construction, financial services, and telecommunications. The overall progress of services liberalization has been modest compared to trade in goods due mainly to constitutional restrictions, limitations on market access, and application of the national treatment principle. Apart from these constitutional and legal constraints, the other obstacles to services liberalization include high cost of doing business, inadequate infrastructure, and governance issues affecting the competitiveness of industries, among others. Clear gaps in the capacity of national agencies and regulators to effectively implement the country’s services liberalization commitments exist. To address these, the paper suggests capacity building and technical assistance as part of a comprehensive trade strategy covering both goods and services, formulating roadmaps for the various services sectors, and enhancing current coordination mechanisms among government agencies, private sector, and civil society

Philippine Development: A Research Journey Through the Philippine Journal of Development

After 27 years of existence, the Philippine Journal of Development (PJD) is considered one of the longest running journals in the country. First published in 1974, the PJD started as a semestral publication of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) and was called the NEDA Journal of Development. The Journal aimed to serve as a vehicle to disseminate the important factors affecting the development process as well as a forum where development issues could be discussed from the larger perspectives of the social sciences. With the founding of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), the management of the Journal was transferred to it in 1981. The PJD has tried to capture the key issues of every decade from the dictatorship of the 70s; the peaceful revolution and difficulties of a fledgling democracy in the 80s; the more politically stable 90s, which paved the way for more substantial economic reforms; to the globalization and information technology age of the twenty-first century, which was ushered in by another People Power revolution. The economic policy shifts and the associated adjustment costs that characterized every decade have made the Philippine development arena an exciting challenge to research scholars and policymakers within and outside the country. The country’s boom-and-bust cycles, unsustainable economic growth, economic reforms like liberalization, privatization and deregulation as well as our participation in multilateral and regional trading arrangements have catalyzed numerous studies and analyses. The PJD has adequately served as a venue for these studies alongside topics ranging from macroeconomic stabilization and international competitiveness to poverty reduction, community-based forest management and rural credit markets. This paper embarks on a research journey as it reviews the various PJD articles that have been published through the years. Its main objective is to examine the Journal in terms of how it has contributed to the understanding of key developmental issues amid the changing international economic and political landscape, and how it has responded to the key policy issues and concerns that have emerged over time. What role has the PJD played in the country’s academic and policy research process? And did it attain its original goals? The paper will seek to answer these and other questions. It is divided into five sections. After an introduction in the first section, the second section gives an overall view of the economic and political events during the period 1972-2001 and the main objectives and thrusts of the PJD. This provides the overall context against which the PDJ is assessed. The third section presents the significant contributions of the PDJ in terms of three major areas: development issues and concerns, mathematical models and statistical techniques, and forward-looking articles. The fourth section looks at gaps and the research areas that could have been served by the PDJ while the fifth section summarizes the major findings and conclusions of the paper

Trade Liberalization and International Migration: The Philippine Case

The paper examines the determinants of international migration in the Philippines. Specifically, it looks at the relationship of trade and migration. It proposes an eclectic migration model and shows by regression analysis that goods and labor mobility are substitutes in the medium and long terms. In the short run, as economies expand due to market reforms, migration may still continue. Other determinants of international migration include the economic growth of the country and specific factors related to the destination countries like wage rates and the existence of networks. Political stability in the Philippines did not turn out to be significant. The key policy prescription is to continue with the economic reforms such as improving trade openness to increase the employment and income possibilities of the Filipino people. In the short run, government needs to ensure the protection and welfare of the overseas contract workers

Linking Social Protection and Humanitarian Assistance in the Philippines

This study is part of a multi-country collection of cases showing that humanitarian assistance and social protection programmes are not necessarily mutually exclusive. As will be shown in the next section, there is an increasing amount of literature discussing the integration of humanitarian assistance into social protection systems or the linkage of disaster risk responses with specific social safety net programmes. The nexus maybe seen through synergies via common frameworks, platforms and systems utilized in such programmes. The Philippines, a developing economy in Southeast Asia continues to tackle the problems of poverty and vulnerability among its 100 million population. It lies in the “Pacific Ring of Fire” and is visited regularly by typhoons, ravaged by flooding, and occasionally hit by destructive earthquakes. It also has two long running conflicts with rebel groups that have displaced thousands of its citizens in hot areas. Despite being a middle income country and owing to the recurrent nature of crises, the country has a permanent presence of humanitarian actors (UN agencies, international, and national NGOs) ready to complement government efforts during emergencies. This specific case study will showcase the linking of humanitarian assistance and social protection in two instances where cash transfer for relief and recovery by two humanitarian agencies, the World Food Programme (WFP) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) successfully “piggybacked” on the Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program (4Ps), a lead social protection programme of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) during the aftermath of typhoon Haiyan

Philippine Development: A Research Journey Through the Philippine Journal of Development

After 27 years of existence, the Philippine Journal of Development (PJD) is considered one of the longest running journals in the country. First published in 1974, the PJD started as a semestral publication of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA). With the founding of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), the management of the Journal was transferred to it in 1981. This paper embarks on a research journey as it reviews the various PJD articles that have been published through the years. Its main objective is to examine the Journal in terms of how it has contributed to the understanding of key developmental issues amid the changing international economic and political landscape, and how it has responded to the key policy issues and concerns that have emerged over time. What role has the PJD played in the country's academic and policy research process? And did it attain its original goals? The paper will seek to answer these and other questions.policy research, economic development, Philippine development, Philippine Journal of Development

Philippine Development: A Research Journey Through the Philippine Journal of Development

After 27 years of existence, the Philippine Journal of Development (PJD) is considered one of the longest running journals in the country. First published in 1974, the PJD started as a semestral publication of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA). With the founding of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), the management of the Journal was transferred to it in 1981. This paper embarks on a research journey as it reviews the various PJD articles that have been published through the years. Its main objective is to examine the Journal in terms of how it has contributed to the understanding of key developmental issues amid the changing international economic and political landscape, and how it has responded to the key policy issues and concerns that have emerged over time. What role has the PJD played in the country's academic and policy research process? And did it attain its original goals? The paper will seek to answer these and other questions.policy research, economic development, Philippine development, Philippine Journal of Development