Don't thrrrroooow us out, we have a "good economy"

The Arroyo administration keeps saying na dapat wag raw silang tanggalin sa pwesto dahil "maganda" raw ang ekonomiya natin.

We had a 4.6% GDP for the first 3 quarters of 2005.

Great.

But Erap had a 4.4% GDP in 2000, and he still got "people powered" and removed from office.

More: The nice thing about erap though is that he left behind a 4.4% GDP in 2000 for Arroyo when she took over in Jan. 2001. During Arroyo's first year though, the GDP rate fell to 3.2% in 2001.

Itong si Ramos naman, he did not leave erap in a good position. Pagalis ni Ramos, he left behind a -0.6% GDP in 1998 for Erap (although I can't blame FVR totally for it since we just got hit with the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997).

From Goodgal on Arroyo's economy:

GDP growth increased from 3% in 2001 to 6.1% in 2004. GNP growth likewise accelerated from 3.5% to 6.2%. For the first quarter of 2005, GDP grew by a moderate 4.6% and GNP, 4.7%.

Mas impressive yata yung kay erap.

Because of the Asian Financial Crisis, Ramos left Estrada with a -0.6% GDP in 1998. But the GDP grew to 2.4% in 1999 under erap, and during his last year in office, his admin turned in 4.4% GDP in 2000

pero bumagsak ulit sa 3.2% when GMA took over in early 2001.

i'm no big fan of erap, but it seems to me that his admin did a better job of making the economy grow compared to arroyo.

so anong mas impressive? ang -0.6% - 4.4% leap from 1998-2000 under erap, o yung 3.2% - 6.0% jump from 2001-2004 under arroyo?

The facts speak for themselves.

UPDATE: From the Manila Bulletin:

By 1996, the GNP had risen to 7.2 percent and the GDP to 5.8 percent. With braggadocio, Ramos claimed that the Philippines was the region’s new tiger. But, he spoke much too soon because the Asian economic crisis burst his economic bubbles as GNP plunged to 0.1 percent and GDP to 0.6 percent.

Erap was dealt a bad hand when he inherited FVR's limp economy (-0.6% GDP) and the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis. But he made the economy grow anyway during 1999 and 2000 (4.4% GDP). And there's no reason to doubt that we were on our way to full recovery (5-6% growth) before edsa dos happened. kasi bumagsak ang economy natin to 3% GDP in 2001 after GMA took over in jan of that same year.

GMA's lucky to inherit erap's 4.4% GDP in 2000, and i think erap admin did a BETTER Job of making the economy grow than GMA, but he never got a chance to complete the job because of edsa dos.

(btw, i believe the reason kung bakit hindi nadaya si erap nung 1998, is because of the Asian Financial Crisis. The Ramos admin and it's boy JDV weren't able to effectively organize a major dagdag bawas operation because of lack of gov't funds and the bad economy.)

UPDATE: this is a sample of how the Arroyo admin deceives the public with it's misleading propaganda. This article was published back in Aug. 25, 2005:

Rigoberto Tiglao has insulted the intelligence of 84 million Filipinos again with his “It's the economy, stupid” article a few days back, using misleading interpretation of historical data claiming for GMA an average 4-percent GDP growth rate against Aquino's 3.8 percent, Ramos' 3.7 percent and Estrada's 2.8 percent. Tiglao uses a deliberately misleading assumption that Estrada's economic governance started in 1998 when the GDP fell to 0.6 percent. Economists know that there is a lag time of at least 6 months as one administration passes on to the next and 1998 is certainly Ramos' responsibility.

Estrada's first year was 1999 and growth had recovered to 2.4-percent GDP from -0.6 percent left by Ramos. This was followed by Erap's year 2000 GDP of 4.4 percent. When Mrs. Arroyo took over in January of 2001 after the Edsa II power grab, that rate fell to 3 percent. These are official Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas figures we are citing.

Tiglao claims that Erap's drinking and mahjong sprees kept him away from decisively leading the economy out of the Asian-wide financial crisis and that Chavit Singson's expose in 2000 only further weakened the troubled economies. But the data show Erap still managed 4.4-percent GDP.

Tiglao claims a decline in the poverty incidence from 27.5 percent in 2000 down to 24.7 percent in 2003 during Gloria's years. What Tiglao doesn't explain is that the poverty threshold was revised since then from P13,823.00/person down to P11,605/person. As an ADB report on the Internet remarked about the change in the poverty threshold, i.e. the level of income/year where an individual is considered poor, it gave the new poverty definition a $50 per capita bonus. But various surveys have put the poverty and hunger at over 50 percent, while real family income of Filipinos fell 14 percent from the year 2000 to 2003 and the purchasing power of the peso fell by 10 percent.

Tiglao omits a discussion of the unemployment figures that during Estrada's time and using SWS figures never exceeded 12.5 percent (the worse in Dec. 2000), while employment under Gloria fluctuated and deteriorated from 14.1 percent in March 2003 down to 20.3 percent in May of 2005. As a consequence, 57 percent of the people rated themselves as poor in the March 2005 survey. Mrs. Arroyo's debacles are real, unlike Estrada's created by destabilization in 2000. Tiglao clearly falsified the presentation of the statistics to suit his objective of prettifying what actually is a horrible economic picture of Gloria's economic management.

One of the most basic and important economic indicators is the level of external debt the Philippines has and this is one thing Tiglao obviously did not want to touch on and never brought up. During Erap's 1999 to 2000 years, foreign debt grew from $50.99 billion to $51.206 billion rising by only about $1.7 billion, Gloria's on the other hand grew from $51.900 billion in 2001 to $53.645 billion in 2002 and then leapt to $57.396 billion in 2003 increasing gigantically by almost $4 billion! Despite this, growth had not significantly improved in 2004 where the President claims up to 6.1-percent GDP, election spending created the artificial upswing which this year crashes back to 4.5 percent as the August issue of The Economist records.

Gloria reaps the disdain of the people from her cruel, dishonest and cheating anti-people policies. Net satisfaction ratings of the Chief Executive from May 1986 to 2005 show her with the worse at -33 percent while Estrada's lowest low never went below 5 percent. Even in detention, Estrada's trust rating exceeded by 9 percent Gloria's trust rating while she sits in Malacañang in the latest 2005 surveys. With blatant lies, Tiglao attempts to pass off his figures as factual and he is easily caught by even the untrained layman. No wonder they are losing the war for the people's trust and support.

While some people may be fooled by statistics, the vast majority of Filipinos are not. The polls sum up the people's reaction: It's Gloria, stupid. If Tiglao had any illusion that he could get away with his misrepresentation of the statistics to prettify Mrs. Arroyo's record, then he has got another think coming. Tiglao had his thumb pointed at himself while taunting others as stupid or dumb or bobo?. Are we surprised? Of course not, the GMA team is a proven bunch of prevaricators, distorting laws and fudging economic data to serve their political convenience.