The country attracts little foreign direct investment and Filipinos still go in their millions to work abroad. Remittances form more than 10 per cent of gross domestic product, the highest ratio in the world [my emphasis].Armed with this statement, I checked up on a pretty good book on the topic of remittance flows, "Remittances: Development Impact and Future Prospects" edited by Samuel Munzele Maimbo and Dilip Ratha. Lo and behold, I came across the following chart on page 24:
Now I may not be very bright, but it seems to me that the Philippines is not even among the top 20 countries in terms of remittances received as a percentage of GDP. For shame, Alan Beattie! My next gripe is with this idea of Beattie's:Being a developing country used to be easy. You followed leaders - Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea - up a well-trodden ladder from agriculture through manufacturing to services. Starting with tilling the soil, you moved on to turning out T-shirts, then toys, then tractors, then television sets, and ended up trading Treasuries.Nevermind that the Philippines would be rather better off right now if it were so damn easy, but why are we to assume that there is "one best way" to development? Beattie's "one best way" thinking mirrors that behind the naive neoliberal Washington Consensus model propagated earlier by the World Bank and IMF to poor effect which the countries he mentioned have wisely avoided. But, instead of assuming that there is an ideal type neoliberal model to follow, he substitutes it for a Wade/Amsden state-led developmental ladder. India provides a good counterpoint to this "Beattie Consensus" (just kidding about the pun). The less-than-ideal state of India's transportation infrastructure has been widely noted. However, it still manages to do well in service industries with its large, well-educated, English-speaking workforce. Given the country's size, India's industrial output is hardly comparable to China's, but it is developing at a fairly rapid clip as well due to a strong service economy.
A final point I would like to dispute is Beattie's idea that remittances are some sort of developmental death kiss and a mark of backwardness. Again, I am no genius, but it seems that India has done quite well for a country which receives the most remittances in the world. Heck, even the beloved China is fourth on the list:
