Friday, January 30, 2009

Philippine economy, recession and OFW (s)

I was so happy to know that my beloved Philippines is not in recession. For the year 2008, it posted 4.6% economic growth, though compared to year 2007's 7.3%, it's slightly lower.

The world is in recession and most economies that the Philippines is dependent on are in this economic turmoil, it's still a good thing that the Philippines is not joining the bandwagon.

I am an OFW and a little worrying scenario, is the devaluation of the Singapore dollar. Last week, 1SGD is equal to 31.35PHP and two weeks ago it was 31.40PHP. When I had my lunch today at Fusionopolis, my mates were discussing about the exchange rates and an office mate told us that the exchange rate right now is 1SGD = 31.15PHP. The fact that the Singapore government is planning to weaken the SGD will make this worse.

I am not sure how many OFWs who are here in Singapore, but this turn of events will generally affect us and our families. The Japan economy is in recession but the Japan yen is still strong and I haven't heard or seen on print and TV that they are planning to weaken the yen. Haven't heard of the US weakening their dollar. Is that legal for a country to actually control their monetary strength? Anyway, if things would really get worse and these rich countries which are in recession will weaken their currencies, then the OFW will be in slaughter. So sad but I am hoping this will not happen and also hoping that this recession will be over soon.

4 comments:

sherry_yao said...

Great post. You're so lucky. Hope 2009 will be a nice year for everyone.

Anonymous said...

Thanks. Yeah hoping for the best and let's help make things better even in our most simple way.

~ay-ay~ said...

the world in recession has affected a lot of OFWs. Many of them were sent home because companies are down streaming. and the problem is is there's a fall back here in the Phils ... if only it were that easy to create jobs...

Anonymous said...

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