Senator Edgardo Angara said that the government's planned creation of economic zones in seven provinces could generate jobs.

“We will now start creating employment zones in Samar, Leyte, Davao Oriental, along the [West Philippine and Philippine Sea] coast, Palawan, up in Cagayan and Aurora,” Angara said last Friday at the launching of his own think tank, the Angara Center for Law and Economics.

He noted that an economic zone in those provinces could provide “immediate employment” to its residents, but did not elaborate how.

“We can now create a zone, especially an economic zone, where we can bypass this regulatory maze and start giving immediate employment,” the senator added.

Apart from investment, professor and former dean of the University of the Philippines School of Labor and Industrial Relations Jorge Sibal told GMA News Online via phone interview on Wednesday that economic zones could be advantageous to poor, agriculture-reliant provinces in terms of additional labor opportunities.

“Economic zones can provide labor-intensive enterprises that could help minimize unemployment and underemployment,” he said.

Underemployment woes

At the center's inauguration, National Economic and Development Authority director-general Arsenio Balisacan that the government should also address underemployment, which has been on a steady rise. 

“The big challenge facing our economy is that we can’t seem to create high-quality jobs for the unskilled labor force. Creating these jobs to match the skills of the population of the poor must be high on the agenda,” he said.

“[I]f we look at the underemployment [rate], it remains very high and worse, it’s the very low-quality jobs that are created,” Balisacan explained.

The NEDA chief added that the maze-like red tape that setting up a business in the country entails limits entrepreneurs and businesspeople.

“We have discovered that we are the only country in this region that collects P200 [terminal fees for] domestic flights. These are inconveniences that are piling up the cost of creating business in this country,” he said.

Balisacan stressed that becoming bogged down by "institutional or legal issues" could create even bigger problems. - BM, GMA News