The Philippines is Great for Expats, Not So Great For Filipinos

It's a tale of two surveys released within a few days of each other. One ranks the Philippines as the 24th best place to live and work.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2019/07/06/dutertes-philippines-among-the-best-places-to-live-and-work-ahead-of-china/#c11313f676b8

Philippines has been ranked 24th best place to live and work, just behind the US, which ranked 23rd, and ahead of China, which ranked 26th. 

That’s according to the 2019 HSBC Expat’s annual survey, which is based on responses from more than 18,000 expats across 163 markets on three metrics: living, career opportunity, and family life. 

The Philippines jumped up the rankings from 26th place last year.

The other ranks the Philippines as the fourth most dangerous country in the world for civilians.

https://globalnation.inquirer.net/177866/us-based-data-group-ranks-ph-fourth-most-dangerous-place-in-the-world-for-civilians

The Philippines ranks high among countries where civilians are most unsafe as a result of what was described as “targeted attacks” arising from government policy, landing at No. 4 next to civil war-torn Yemen on a list of countries where violence against civilians is leading to rising casualty figures, according to a United States-based research and analysis group.

Quite a stark contrast and like all of the regular surveys taken in or about the Philippines ripe for politicisation. 

https://twitter.com/MarkYu_DPT/status/1147867067112153089

https://twitter.com/gorilla_truth/status/1149979268337659904

Both of these Twitter armchair assessments are wrong. The HSBC survey has not "slapped the life out of the dilawans" (which means the Liberal Party but can be extended to mean all those who oppose Duterte's policies.) Neither is all the killings "the way we like it." Plenty of Filipinos are worried about the flood of violence surging across the county. The ACLED is also not a human rights organisation. They merely collect data about political violence and analyse it. They do not advocate policy.

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) is a disaggregated conflict collection, analysis and crisis mapping project. ACLED collects the dates, actors, types of violence, locations, and fatalities of all reported political violence and protest events across Africa, South Asia, South East Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America. Political violence and protest includes events that occur within civil wars and periods of instability, public protest and regime breakdown. ACLED’s aim is to capture the forms, actors, dates and locations of political violence and protest as it occurs across states. The ACLED team conducts analysis to describe, explore and test conflict scenarios, and makes both data and analysis open to freely use by the public.

https://www.acleddata.com/about-acled/

Let's take a look at the second report first which consists of two reports. The crowning of the Philippines as the 4th most dangerous country in the world actually took place back in May with the release of ACLED's "Fact Sheet: Civilians in Conflict."

https://www.acleddata.com/2019/05/28/fact-sheet-civilians-in-conflict/

There are two sets of data in this first report. "Countries with the highest number of civilian targeting events" and "Countries with the most reported fatalities from civilian targeting." As you can see the Philippines did not make the second list. This data also extends only from January 1 to May 18, 2019. 

The second report about the Philippines from ACLED has data that extends to June 29th, 2019.

https://www.acleddata.com/2019/07/03/press-release-data-confirm-wave-of-targeted-attacks-in-the-philippines/

The report states that there have been 450 attacks targeting civilians which have resulted in 490 fatalities. I suppose that would have to include a single attack where multiple people are killed. They don't explain the math here. How do you get 490 deaths out of 450 attacks? The majority of the deaths are of drug suspects and the rest are of current and former government officials. State forces, the PNP, log the most kills but the ACLED posits that many of the motorcycle assassins could be linked to the state. 

With only 490 fatalities that would tie the Philippines with Mali but since the first data set is only from January 1 until mid-May it is likely that Mali has now surpassed 490 fatalities. I think this data needs a lot more clarification. It's not clear that the Philippines is the 4th most dangerous country in the world. According to ACLED's own data that honour goes to Mali. The data set being used to label the Philippines as the 4th most dangerous country does not include fatal events but only non-fatal events where civilians were targeted. Not to downplay the seriousness of 340 non-fatal events targeting civilians but a fatal event is certainly more dangerous than a non-fatal event.

The ACLED does include an "other" category in this data set but it is much smaller compared to drug suspects and government officials. However that data should not be ignored. The deaths of farmers, activists, and lawyers at the hands of unknown men, often alleged to be government assassins, is appalling. I also find it strange that police operations against drug dealers constitutes political violence.

It must be kept in mind that the ACLED is also only tracking political violence and not regular murders so the numbers represented here are a lot lower than they would be if all types of violence were factored in. What is clear is that being a politician or a drug user could lead to your death at the hands of the state or of assassins likely connected to the state. 

While Filipino politicians and drug users are being killed foreign expats are having the time of their life. Here are the results of the 2019 HSBC Expat Survey which ranks the Philippines as 24th best place to live and work.

https://expatexplorer.hsbc.com/survey/country/philippines/chart:table

What these numbers mean I have no idea but here is Forbes to give us some useful analysis.

That may come as a surprise to some for a couple of reasons. One of them is that the Philippines has a reputation for sending its own people overseas in droves rather than attracting foreigners who want to live and work there. 

The other reason is that the country is mired in violence, which has taken a huge human toll. 

Apparently, that isn’t what foreign expats are concerned about. They find it easy to relocate to a country of friendly people and a reasonable cost of living. “With its tropical climate and steadily growing economy, the Philippines is quickly becoming one of the most popular expat destinations in Southeast Asia, “ says the report. 

Meanwhile, the results of the expats survey should be interpreted with extreme caution. People surveyed are usually more affluent and better educated than the average immigrant, and they are on short assignments. This means that an overseas assignment may be seen as an “adventure.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2019/07/06/dutertes-philippines-among-the-best-places-to-live-and-work-ahead-of-china/#c11313f676b8

Foreigners aren't concerned about violence because it does not affect them. They are not the targets of motorcycle assassins. That is not to say foreigners are never targets. Plenty of foreigners have been murdered in the Philippines but when you are working for a company making Dollars or Euros in a land where the Peso is devalued and you can purchase more why would you care about anything else? With more money to spend foreigners are also more likely to live in gated communities where less violence occurs. 

A judgement about the state of the economy or the strength of Duterte's polices cannot be made with this survey. Expats come and go and many may have no real grasp on the political or even economic situation as they are busy with work. Many are even busy with play. Anecdotal stories about Filipinas being easy pickings for any foreigner abound!

Then again there are also horror stories about having to deal with the minutiae of Philippine bureaucracy which can require stacks of paperwork just to get your factory running. Foreigners also cannot own real property in the Philippines meaning land or houses. Any foreign business must be 60% Filipino owned. How is the Philippines a good business environment when you cannot even wholly own your business? At least the labor is cheap!

Overall these two surveys don't really tell us anything meaningful about the Philippines. One is a survey of expats and the other is data about political violence. Anyone who reads these surveys will inevitably project their own interpretation upon them. Labelling the Philippines as the 4th most dangerous country in the world is misleading as there are two lists in the ACLED data and the one with fatalities does not feature the Philippines. Also political violence is going to be directed at a very small subset of the population. Thinking a true picture of the Philippine economy will emerge by surveying expats is foolish because of their tenuous and brief connection to the country. Who did they survey anyway? I assume it's the more affluent Westerners and not the Chinese being sneaked over here to work in illegal online gambling casinos.

One thing is for sure though: The world of the poor Filipino with a target on his back because he is a drug user or a land activist and the world of the Foreigner expat with a target on his back because he is white and wealthy live in two different worlds.