Asia’s Siamese Twins: Thailand and The Philippines (60 Years of Likeness, Sharing and Development)

REGISTER

Little is known as to why Thailand and the Philippines have recently celebrated their “60th Anniversary of Relationship”. Much as the younger generation hopes to know, they don’t seem to have even countable remnants to hold on to. Partly true! Because if we are going to count on the generation at least a decade back, there has been no striking memory of substantial alliance between these two countries. There has been an awareness gap but I believe it happened in order to pave the way for regeneration – a rebirth of sort, as I may call it.

Since the 1950s, in the days of the then Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay, the relationship of Thailand and the Philippines had already started. It was the days when the Philippines had been slowly climbing the ladder of success in becoming Asia’s No. 1 ahead of Japan which had still been recovering from the devastation of WWII. Philippines had earned respect and recognition from its neighbors at that time; and Thailand, in particular, had been interested in the reform program of the Philippines’ agricultural resources. Thailand, as believed, drew an inspiration from this in its on-going agricultural awareness. And while it appeared that the said awareness had evolved in tremendous success, Philippines had been regarded in the way of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Asia’s Nobel Prize equivalent, which, in fact, had been given to King Bhumipol in recognition of His Majesty’s agricultural programs for development.

Philippines’ influence continued to exist not only in Thailand, but also in other Asian countries in the early 60s when the so-called “green revolution” had changed multifariously the food supply in Asia. It actually became a model in easing constraints on agricultural factor markets and at the same time enjoined to promote infrastructure and public investment in people which both determined the esteem Philippines had during that time. Thailand, like a real twin, meticulously learned from and cared about it. In fact, it hitherto used and developed the principles of “green revolution” into more productive ways and means. This was believed one of the reasons why Thailand had been continually considered as, if not the top, one of the best agricultural market resources especially in terms of rice production.

The twinship of these two countries was further assumed during the 1997 Asian economic turmoil when both the Thailand Baht and Philippine Peso hit the bottom low at the world market. Of course, we knew that both countries had so far survived that measly period of financial history, but it was observed however that the Philippines’ then foreign capital-driven growth model had been patterned by the Ramos administration from the Thai model of development. The Thai scheme of gearing up growth through a massive infusion of foreign capital was successful. The Philippines, like Thailand, targeted the influx of institutional funds going around the globe in search of profitable and substantial investment outlets. This had been proven effective and thus applied and used exponentially by both Thailand and the Philippines in the last decade and even until now.

---to be continued---

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