CLARK FREEPORT – The implementation of the second tranche of excise tax on fuel in 2019 will boost brain drain in the country, the labor group Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP) warned yesterday.
BMP president Leody de Guzman said the fuel tax hike under the TRAIN Law would lead to the “imminent and increasing exodus of young, talented and skilled Filipinos in search of greener pastures abroad” next year.
In a statement, De Guzman cited a Gallup study indicating that “the Philippines’ potential net migration index (PNMI) stands at a high 9 percent.”
He said this is borne by “a frustration that has been building up alongside a restive labor front specially among the young adults.”
De Guzman noted that “PNMI measures the total potential net change to the adult population by subtracting those who would like to move out of a country from those who would like to move into a country.”
The TRAIN 1 Law imposed additional P6 per liter excise tax on fuel in three tranches over three years.
The first tranche of P2 took effect in 2018 and the second tranche, imposing P2 more, is supposed to take effect in 2019.
“The best and the brightest of Filipinos have been leaving the country with the continued implementation of the neoliberal policies of deregulation, liberalization, privatization, contractualization even since the Cory Aquino administration. But runaway inflation induced by the oil excise taxes of the Duterte administration since last year maybe the final straw to break the camel’s back,” De Guzman said.
He warned that “the rising inflation rate in 2018 which is expected to continue in 2019 with the second wave of oil excise taxes, will only give more reason for our young workers and college graduates to migrate to other countries.
De Guzman also noted that Gallup study indicated “that 16 percent highly educated Filipinos will likely leave the country to work or live abroad.”
“Also, about 13 percent of the Philippines’ young population — aged 15 to 29 seeks to move out and migrate to a foreign country if they had the chance,” he said.
De Guzman lamented that “unfortunately, with the taxation shift from income to consumption, the tax burden is more felt by the poor although they did not benefit from the increased exemptions to income taxes. Worse, they are overtaxed and yet they hardly feel the social services and safety nets that were promised to be part of the tax reform measures.”
He said “we could not blame the youth for opting to migrate abroad; bled dry by taxes, unserviced and abandoned by the state, and now further agitated by the recent acquittal of politicians charged with plunder.”
De Guzman said that government officials are often “not alarmed over our brain drain as they all adhere to the tacit policy of labor exportation, as OFW remittances keep the consumption-based economy afloat”.
“The ruling elite do not have a vision of sound national development based on industry and agriculture, that generates more jobs for the majority of our countrymen. They are mere rent-seekers who live on taxes generated by migrant Filipino workers,” he also lamented.
To prove this assertion, the BMP leader cited the utter failure of the government to produce one million jobs annually as mandated by its Philippine Development Plan 2017-2022 as the practice of contractual employment remains prevalent.
De Guzman said brain drain would be contained by scrapping the government’s “export-oriented, import-dependent economic path.”
“We should pursue the modernization of agriculture and economic industrialization while ensuring living wages and regular jobs, in order to provide not only for the needs of the Filipino consuming public but also to the working class that create all social wealth,” De Guzman said.
