In 1992, when I was a staff member at the newly-established Office of the President-Mindanao, we crunched some numbers and concluded that Mindanao wallowed in negative economic growth at minus 0.48 percent. Although that figure would climb steadily to 4.12 percent by 1995, midway through Fidel Ramos’s presidency, that 1992 backwater fact was telling.

For one, it compared with the national figure—0.4 percent—a similarly dismal reality. For another, it dovetailed a story of how a nation clawed its way out of the abysmal hole of Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s (FM) martial law years.

It was in 1984 and 1985, the peak of FM’s corrupt regime, that the country experienced its worst recession after World War II. The economy contracted by 7.3 percent within that time, according to the Quezon City-based Human Rights Violations’ Victims Memorial Commission in a paper released in July 2021. And GDP per capita plunged by 9.4 percent within those two years.

The Commission added: “So large was this downturn that it took the country more than two decades to recover the level of GDP per person in 1982. GDP per person back in 1982 was more than P48,000. This dropped sharply because of the economic crisis during the Marcos regime’s waning years and did not recover until 2003.

“These so-called ‘lost decades of development’ singularly demonstrate the pernicious impacts of the Marcos regime on the economic lives of Filipinos.”

And what have we today?

The government is scrambling to contain inflation—now at 3.58 percent—and the consequential high commodity prices. Among a string of other stop-gap measures, cash grants under the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program of the Department of Social Welfare and Development will be adjusted to accommodate the impact of inflation.

House Speaker Martin Romualdez and several congressmen have been frenetically doling out bonanzas. In Tacloban City, the politician and his fellow congressmen gave out P2,000 plus 20 kilos of rice to 5,000 residents. In Davao del Norte, he and his coterie shelled out P913 million in cash and services to 250,000 people.

Of course, there’s the senatorial elections next year. So, there’s that.

Still, the purported sense of noblesse oblige seems apropos to the times. More Filipinos are hungry this year compared to last year, according to the Social Weather Stations. Hunger has swelled to 14.2 percent in March from 12.6 percent in December 2023.

Last week, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas reported that “high commodity prices and lower incomes have turned the consumer sentiment in the Philippines negative for the first time in 13 quarters.”

The BSP cited the results of its Consumer Expectation Survey that said that the outlook of Filipinos for the next quarter was negative 0.4 percent, “the lowest since the negative 2.2 percent posted in the first quarter of 2021.”

Only two days ago, the news media reported that Philippine manufacturing posted its second consecutive month of job retrenchments in June.

S&P Global Market Intelligence noted that the job losses paralleled the three-month low Purchasing Manager’s Index score of 51.3 in June. It was at 51.9 in May.

And foreign investments? What foreign investments? A Rappler story last October cited a BSP report stating that total foreign direct investments plunged by 14.7% compared to figures the previous year. In short, the author wrote, “We’re repelling more foreign investments than we are attracting them.”

With these troubles pervading the land—not counting the ones on the other fronts—one wonders how a vainly rebounding Marcos government will respond. Will it do a Marie Antoinette with cake and a glass of champagne? Or will it do a sugarcoat overkill—which isn’t farfetched considering the Congress’ advertising budget of more than half a billion pesos?