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The Southeast Asian country has vast amounts of gold, nickel, copper and other valuable minerals, but for years its mining industry has underperformed due to bad governance, foreign ownership restrictions and domestic opposition.
Bad governance is one thing that may have indeed marred the industry.
Domestic opposition, I believe, is welcome because mining is a double-edged industry that can both enable and destroy the country (most keen on the environmental aspect) and thus critical thinking and regulation is needed.
Foreign ownership restrictions is one thing that we should not consider to abandon. Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) under the guise of "strategic alliances" are seldom true towards an ideal cooperative venture, which can sometimes leave only fringe benefits to the host country. In writing, the terms might be good - but in practice (and several clauses later), the principal will always seek the position of advantage.
Thus, such should be taken with more considerable approach. This has to be handled with utmost scrutiny as this process of leaving the country open or further relax its policies for foreign ownership acquisitions can often fall to a race to the bottom scenario.
As in this case, should the government and the proponents move towards an MOU in the mining industry with the foreign government, let's hope that the following criticism for FDIs should be considered and worked around with fail-safe policies, i.e. FDIs can lead to Deceptive Industrialization - which stems from the following:
1. Imparting technologies to suit their needs and not the needs of the Least Developed Countries or Less Developing Countries (LDCs)
2. Generating economic dependence at a new level instead of economic independence
3. Draining the country of its resources in exchange for few and temporary high employment opportunities and production of consumer goods.
FDIs have their role especially with initial capital inflows and technology-transfers - but the host country needs to be pragmatic about this and be selective. Because the increased liberalization of FDIs can often result to unwanted outcomes based from the following criticisms as well:
1. Can challenge national sovereignty and autonomy.
2. Can lead to a lowering of labor, health, safety and environmental standards due to regional competition to attract investors.
3. Can decrease foreign exchange in the long-run because foreign principals import a substantial amount of intermediate inputs and equipment and repatriate profits.
4. May not lead to extra government revenues because of tax concessions, subsidies, and tariff protections.
5. May fail to fill savings/investment gap because foreign principals (usually through multi-national corporations or MNCs) stifle competition, reduce domestic savings rate, and crowd out investment of local firms.
6. Anti-competitive practices by MNC affiliates.
7. Volatile flows of investment and related payments that are deleterious for the balance of payments.
8. Tax avoidance and abusive transfer pricing by MNC affiliates.
9. Transfer of polluting activities or technologies.
10. Crowding out local firms and suppressing domestic entrepreneurial development.
11. Crowding out local products, technologies, networks and business practices, giving rise to harmful socio-cultural effects.
12. Concessions to MNCs, especially in export processing zones, allowing them to skirt labor and environmental regulations.
13. Excessive influence on economic affairs and decision-making, with possible negative effects on industrial development and national security.
The Philippines as an LDC but if forward-looking should opt for a more strategic approach through techno-nationalism with a goal...
TO CATCH UP WITH THE ADVANCED FIRMS IN THE INDUSTRIALLY ADVANCED COUNTRIES
This goal creates the critical strategic framework and justifies practices -- such as targeting and government-induced collaboration -- that may have to be abandoned or modified once catch-up has been accomplished. We should not be playing followers all along and subject ourselves from demands of others.
And we can follow the examples of our East-Asian neighbors to gain leverage on our own - and not play pawn.
As a specific example, we can acquire mining technology through purchase. But we develop our own technology from R&D and reverse-engineering to develop components locally (not to be dependent on equipment abroad). It can be self-sustaining once the technology is mastered since the money and metal from our own resources can definitely supply local mining equipment manufacturers with the necessary components and extend to other industries that needs metal resources. With a positive cycle, we can even leap-frog to other technologies and have the freedom to do it because we use our own resources.
Thus not only do we export raw materials, we also export components - and hopefully even technologies once we reach the creative stage of developing them.
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However the Philippines has largely missed out on the economic windfalls the likes of Australia and countries in Africa have seen in recent years as they sold resources to power China's surging economy.
We need to power ours and let it surge as well.