APMM Statement on PH Govt’s Overseas Filipino Bank
Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants
Duterte’s Overseas Filipino Bank will only reinforce labor export, not resolve it
Is Duterte solving forced labor migration or reinforcing it?
This is the question of the Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) as it expresses grave concern over the recent move by the Philippine government to create a bank for overseas Filipinos.
On September 28, Philippine president Rodrigo Roa Duterte signed Executive Order No. 44, “Approving the Acquisition of Philippine Postal Savings Bank by the Land Bank of the Philippines,” and converting it into an Overseas Filipino Bank (OFB). In this order, the Philippine government reasons the need to “ensure a sound macroeconomic policy by strengthening the effectiveness of financial inclusion initiatives, particularly those focusing on efficient delivery of micro finance and micro-insurance products and services for Filipinos including those who live abroad.”
For the APMM, the proposed creation of the OFB is a big step back for the President Duterte if he were to fulfill his promise to bring overseas Filipinos back home.
First, the EO44 reflects the Philippine government’s continued adherence to the neoliberal framework of the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD), which is managing migration as a tool for development. The GFMD, known to champion labor export, has regaled the Philippines as the perfect model for the latter’s labor export policy and encouraged governments to take after it.
To the GFMD, the migrant workers’ remittances are an important ingredient that governments can maximise if they were to pursue and achieve economic development. Nevertheless, the same platform, since its first meeting in 2007, has not thoroughly discussed or developed concrete action plans to address the worsening rights conditions of migrant workers or the many drivers of migration, specifically economic instability in many migrant-sending countries.
With the EO44, President Duterte is towing the GFMD line instead of challenging it. This is opposite to the earlier promise of the president to resolve forced labor migration in the Philippines. Instead of making moves to develop industries in the Philippines as a way to address unemployment, the Duterte administration is only relying to jobs abroad for all Filipinos.
Second, the E044 may yet to be another money-making scheme targeting OFWs.
In addition to the EO44, the Duterte administration, through its agencies and departments, has put forward programs for OFWs yet were rejected by the OFWs themselves. The iDOLE card of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), for example, was proposed as an alternative to the Overseas Employment Certificate (OEC). The OFWs regarded the OEC as burdensome, irrelevant and redundant and called for its scrapping.
The iDOLE card was proposed yet apparently no budget was defined for its production and the government intends to pass on the responsibility to recruitment agencies and other relevant businesses notorious for overcharging would-be OFWs.
Another contested move was the implementation of guidelines by the Bureau of Customs, a bureau under the Department of Finance, to impose higher taxes and more restrictive requirements to overseas Filipinos who intend to send packages back home, also known as balikbayan boxes. The guidelines were supposed to address rampant illegal smuggling yet targeted overseas Filipinos, who are approximately more than 10 million in number already.
Third, the current economic set-up in the Philippines is not favourable to micro-finance projects.
Previous Philippine administrations, through the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) and other government departments, have initiated micro-financing projects for Filipinos based in the homeland and overseas. While these projects have good intentions to cultivate entrepreneurship among Filipinos and reel in OFWs for reintegration, problems related to a very neoliberal economic set-up prevent such objectives to be realised.
Filipinos availing of the micro-financing projects were unable to continue their business and consequently pay back the loans due to a number of reasons, including the continuous increase in cost of goods to sell and the steep competition they have with big business. Small grocery businesses, for example, may face difficulty competing with big-name supermarkets. This is not to mention the high cost of now-privatised utilities such as electricity and water.
If the OFB were to be realised, what assurance can the Duterte administration give the OFWs that it won’t fail? With their current economic agenda, not to mention the unbridled corruption that riddles the current administration, this may hardly be the case.
The APMM hopes that the President Duterte and his administration will do away with the a neoliberal economic framework and instead work toward developing industry build-ups that are more pro-people - from improving agriculture while providing land to farmers, developing the national industry that attends to the needs of the people and provides jobs to them, to re-owning and regulating public services and utilities that will be more affordable, if not free, to all.
Reference: Ramon Bultron, APMM manager
Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM)
Office Address: G/F, No.2 Jordan Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR
Tel. no.: (852) 2723-7536
Fax no.: (852) 2735-4559
General E-mail: ap...@apmigrants.org
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