Chowking Express
What to do with a country where performing fellatio is the only time eating out is worry-free?
ABOARD CX903 — We are departing Hong Kong for Manila as I write my first dispatch in over a month — a true disservice to my avid readers who are still countable on one hand. A colleague, his girlfriend and I went to “Asia’s World City” as the summer sun blasted at 33 degrees Celsius. Humidity made the air as thick as the skin of some politicians who were whipped by their masters into ensuring that the Maharlika Investment Fund is approved by Congress on the administration’s deadline: Before President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s State of the Nation Address. Marathon deliberations on this measure concluded in a nearly 12-hour session at the Senate where the gavel banged in favor of the Maharlika fund as 19 senators voted for the proposal, while only one voted against, another abstained and three more were absent.
The Maharlika fund is big on promises, but many economists (who have a better grasp at numbers than I do) worry that the proposal is — like Hong Kong summers — full of hot air. Particularly glaring is the pledge that the fund will generate eight percent in returns year-on-year: A feat that apparently not even the best investment bankers in the Philippines can achieve. But perhaps the wisdom of Congress is not to let just Filipinos run the Maharlika fund, as it did provide an entry point for foreigners to sit in its board of directors. But to my simple mind, this is quite bonkers. Maharlika is supposed to be a sovereign wealth fund, so shouldn’t the sovereign (i.e. the Filipino people) manage it solely? Senator Grace Poe, in her interpellation of the Maharlika fund bill, said this could be a way for a Warren Buffet-type to have a hand in the Maharlika fund, but economist Enrico Patiga Villanueva pointed out that if Filipinos cannot be fully trusted to handle the fund, then maybe we shouldn’t be creating it at all.
That aside, maybe the most glowing vow of proponents of the Maharlika fund is that it will somehow address economic hardships which are severely hurting the pockets of Filipinos. How, exactly, is unclear. Senator Mark Villar, who shepherded the fund through the Senate, acknowledged that high inflation and slow economic growth threaten the Philippines and said lawmakers must take “bold steps towards exploring measures that will contribute to high growth that cannot be easily reversed by external headwinds and future crises.” My guess is that exposing government coffers funded by Filipinos to market forces here and abroad is part of those “bold steps.”
Labor groups point out, however, that there is another bold step that legislators can take to immediately ease the pressure being exerted on Filipinos by high inflation: Raise wages. Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri has taken the lead in this issue, with him pushing for a P150 daily minimum wage hike. It is not as huge as other labor groups hope for, but they say it is a step in the right direction. But there are concerns that this will hurt small businesses and may even make inflation worse.
But how bad can it get? To paraphrase Catriona Gray, the life here is very poor and very sad as it is. This is a middle-class anecdote, but we were stunned to find out that food prices in Hong Kong are similar to those in Manila. A good meal from a local neighborhood restaurant ranges from P300 to P500, which is comparable to a meal at a Metro Manila restaurant. The key difference is that in Hong Kong, the minimum wage is around P2,240 a day, while in Metro Manila, it’s pegged at a quarter of that at P570. It is mind-boggling that food prices in Metro Manila are at par with one of the most expensive cities in the world. And it is not just Hong Kong. A friend visited from Canada a few weeks ago and even she was shocked at how expensive it has become to dine out. I know that the Philippines wants to be internationally competitive, but this is not the horserace I want our country to be participating in.
There is this argument that wages are kept low so that the Philippines can compete with other countries. But I often look at Hong Kong and all the investments that have poured into the city and wonder: What the fuck is going on in here on this day?