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I was reviewing (in google earth) all the countries in Asia in their overall economic situation and after going over even countries with lower wages like Myanmar, Vietnam ect, I noticed that Philippines is the only country in the whole region of Asia littered with a sea of slums and dirt and overall bad looking appearance. Does that really happen to be the case?
I thought Vietnam was poorer and Myanmar too, but I looked at the cities and was impressed by how well layed out, clean and free of slums they were. In stark contrast to the sea of slums all over downtown Manila and surrounding the city as well, the other countries don't seem to have a single slum in them!
All cities in the Phils also seem to have the same mess of dirty looking slums.
My thoughts on the reasoning behind this are that it has a huge population problem, natural disaster problem, is plagued by Muslim related violence and is seemingly off the RADAR for almost all kinds of investors.
Have you ever been been throughout Asia? . I've been throughout Asia and certainly the Philippines isn't the worst, and i've lived in Manila for 9 years. Muslim related violence is contained down south. All cities? really? I know Manila is the most dense city in the world, but have you ever lived in it? Natural Disaster problem? thats any island nation in the pacific, but still they handle it very well. Off the radar for investors? You may want to take a second look.
I'm curious like the other poster said what sparked your interested about the Philippines. Unless you've been physically throughout asia and not just looking at information from the internet, i will take your points seriously.
Oh yeah here's my backyard in El Nido, Palawan (Philippines), looks like a slum to you?
I take it the OP is from some southeast asian country or somewhere from east asia and lives in toronto and is trying to make himself feel better by putting another east asian country down.
Surprisingly, I couldn't even find any photos anywhere in image search of Vietnam slums, but there were lots from Manila:
I couldn't find any images of Yangon, Myanmar slums either, because as I had figured, they don't actually have them, neither does Cambodia. This is why I wondered why it is a Manila thing. South Asia has a lot of it, but in SE Asia, Manila is the only one that seems to be like that.
You're not going to find any photos of Vietnam slums because they have a repressive government that doesn't allow people to distribute photos of things that make it look bad. Just like you won't find many photos of factory conditions in China, nor of poverty in North Korea. You'd be arrested for trying to publish photos the government didn't like in any of those countries. This is not true of the Philippines, thus why you were able to many find photos of their slums.
I can see by those pics there are certainly some awful areas there, but I work with a lot of people from the Philippines who are all college-educated, and were educated in their home country, so I would certainly not assume it's the poorest of the poor by any means.
You're not going to find any photos of Vietnam slums because they have a repressive government that doesn't allow people to distribute photos of things that make it look bad. Just like you won't find many photos of factory conditions in China, nor of poverty in North Korea. You'd be arrested for trying to publish photos the government didn't like in any of those countries. This is not true of the Philippines, thus why you were able to many find photos of their slums.
Locals will have a hard time in Vietnam. However, Vietnam still has tourism so photos of the poverty there is fairly common:
N. Korea is another story altogether. You can still find photos but its much rarer and frankly I'm too lazy to search for them right now
Thanks. I just wanted to let the OP know that his inability to find photos of Vietnam poverty as compared to photos of Manila poverty didn't necessarily reflect lack of poverty in Vietnam as compared to Manila.
Thanks. I just wanted to let the OP know that his inability to find photos of Vietnam poverty as compared to photos of Manila poverty didn't necessarily reflect lack of poverty in Vietnam as compared to Manila.
Your correct, the conditions I described are typical of many countries within that region. What defines a country as poorer then another is the segment of the population that may live under those conditions. For example, those conditions may be typical of 10% of the population of Philippines vs 20% of the population of Bangladesh (those numbers aren't accurate btw just for example purposes).
May I ask what sparked your interest in the Philippines exclusively out of all the countries in that region?
I am interested because I plan to go an spend a fair amount of time there. I travel to less developed countries like Peru and the Phils because I really enjoy the people and culture. Money from Canada goes a long way and you live like a king on little over a thousand a month.
Also, I researched a lot lately and I find something rather strange. Manufacturing seems to be getting sent to ever country around except the Philippines. Even Bangladesh and Myanmar are attracting far more investments in that area. I read that for any poor nation, manufacturing is the foundation of industrialization and rising a country out of poverty.
Very interestingly, Philippines is mostly investing in business that you can categorize as 'stagnating the country' This is because they are building their economy around outsourcing and that is specifically in existance for one thing only: for low wages. This means that I have been able to determine that Philippines has set its intentions on a trajectory that is BUILT ON low wages and this is something that can't be advanced too much on, or they loose their competitive advantage. You can say they are putting a cap on their growth area. This trend is being supported by the fact that they have a power crisis which shows no sign of getting fixed for anything more than to mean the minimum needs of its huge population. Since this means no industrialization, I say it is say to say that Philippines will be the most likely in the region to stay unindustrialized. It is better off than many countries in the region already, but they are engaging in industries like manufacturing which means the sky is the limit for them. Vietnam which is still poor, as of now at least, chose to get active in diverse manufacturing is well on its way to be a lot like China, only a smaller version.
I took an economics course at the University of the Philippines in 1985. The professor echoed the point, "The Philippines will always be a Third World country because we export tomatoes and import tomato paste."
A country that is a net importer of manufactured goods against raw materials is always on the losing side of the imbalance of trade (and the Saudi peninsula entities are no different--they are still basically Third World countries, appearing otherwise only because they are small).
Have you ever been been throughout Asia? . I've been throughout Asia and certainly the Philippines isn't the worst, and i've lived in Manila for 9 years. Muslim related violence is contained down south. All cities? really? I know Manila is the most dense city in the world, but have you ever lived in it? Natural Disaster problem? thats any island nation in the pacific, but still they handle it very well. Off the radar for investors? You may want to take a second look.
I'm curious like the other poster said what sparked your interested about the Philippines. Unless you've been physically throughout asia and not just looking at information from the internet, i will take your points seriously.
Oh yeah here's my backyard in El Nido, Palawan (Philippines), looks like a slum to you?
About the natural diaster situation, Philippines beat most of the African countries that are in miserable conditions for a spot in the worst vulnerability to climate change in the latest index recently put out. They took into account exposure to threats, capacity to cope with the disasters and capacity to adapt to them. Other badly exposed countries like Japan scored nowhere near the Phils because of how well they cope.
And by off the RADAR to manufacturing I mean how little attention I see them getting. I have been sifting through reports for days regarding manufacturing and I constantly see Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, Japan, Korea, China and Thailand, plus tons of countries in Africa/Europe/N America come up, but only see Philippines come up in a few small instances. Low-cost labour is being sent to poorer countries than Phils and higher end stuff is going to the future superpower countries. I read that manufacturing is essentially a prerequisite for poor countries to become industrialized/middle-high income and with the Phils appearing outside of priorities of that, it looks no good for them. The Global Manufacturing competitive report has tons of countries, but what's missing? Phils. Reports on the next rising countries/superpowers have lots too and what missing? Phils again. The income forecast for 2030 for counties also had lots of countries and you can guess which one ended up at the bottom. I am not bashing the Phils, but bringing it all up as to why? Why do all projections and reports put Phils below all these other countries? I am suspecting that it being ranked as lowest in ease of starting a business, one of the most severe climate vulnerable countries, bad business policies, major power issue, lack of infrastruture as being the huge bundle of problems that keep it down.
Just a bit of an observation. Before I found these actual reports projecting the future of all these countries, I looked into what industries existed, were lifting poor countries out of poverty and which industries were being supported in the Phils. Turns out that the Phils is working up its main industries around outsourcing on top of agriculture being the biggest player for the. Outsourcing of customer service relies on incomes remaining very low to be competitive and the country is investing its future in it so I can see they have committed long term to the income situation of the country for non-elite to stay the same- very low. Agriculture is always among the poorest of industries, especially with low infrastructure and typhoons to rip it up. So I created my own projection based on all I learned, that the country's income would have an almost flat, low incline. I found this projection formulated recently and it matched that very prediction I made. So I guess that seems to be a good guess. So I guess the slums will be hard to get rid of because this kind of industry does not get these 10s of millions on very low income into a decent work place. They need to forget depending on BPO outsourcing and agri and go straight to manufacturing, but that requires a ton of new power to put millions of people online fully plus industries.
Last edited by Santaronto; 03-14-2014 at 03:13 PM..
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