The most acute economic problem facing the Philippines today is poverty.
Millions of Filipinos are living below decency. There is lack in many things :
housing, food, clothing, and education. But poverty is the result of lack of employment opportunities
which is in turn the result of very low investment in productive activities such as factories
and infrastucture. On the other hand, lack of investment is due to lack of honest and competent leadership.
Thus it can be said that lact of honest and competent leadership is the root cause of poverty.
The cause-and-effect cycle can be shown thus:
Lack of honest and competent Leadership => Low Investment => Unemployment => Poverty
To be more specific, the following are the problems causing the general problem of poverty:
Low savings rate
Lack of and/or inefficient infrastructure like roads, ports, airports, power, tourist facilities
Low investment in manufacturing due to high cost of doing business here
Lack of employment opportunities
Lack of skilled manpower
Imbalance foreign trade (more imports than export) - this is in part due to uncompetitiveness in the world market
