What's the real state of the nation?

AS expected, the economy was among the focus of this year's State of the Nation Address, as Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo basked in its growth as a major accomplishment of her administration, highlighted by a strong peso which appreciated to P44.80 to the U.S. dollar last Friday, buoyed largely by foreign fund inflows into a rejuvenated stock market.

And now that the country's economy is supposedly back on track, Arroyo's seventh SONA has mapped out the government's agenda in the last three years of her term anchored on the "social payback" mantra she has kept intoning in many of her speeches. As already intimated by Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye, this will be in the form of investments in education, social safety nets, vital infrastructure, and peace and order to ensure that "more and more of our people will not just see, but more importantly experience, the tangible benefits of our growing economy."

But are the economic gains for real and are they sustainable?

Former budget secretary and University of the Philippines economics professor Benjamin Diokno does not think so. During the last six years, the economy, he says, has not performed well enough to make a difference in the lives of most Filipinos, especially the poor.