As Philippines booms, overseas workers begin to return home

As Philippines booms, overseas workers begin to return home

MANILA — Last year, Mr Mateo Ragonjan took a leap of faith. The executive sous-chef of a seven-star luxury hotel in Abu Dhabi packed his bags to take up a similar job back home in the Philippines.

BY –6 HOURS 39 MIN AGO

MANILA — Last year, Mr Mateo Ragonjan took a leap of faith. The executive sous-chef of a seven-star luxury hotel in Abu Dhabi packed his bags to take up a similar job back home in the Philippines.

He is one of a small group of like-minded Filipinos returning home, a sign of confidence in an economy that for decades has seen millions leave in search of better prospects.

Mr Ragonjan, 41, now helps run a 300-man kitchen that caters to guests and high-rollers of Manila’s newest and most luxurious casino resort. He is one of 400 overseas Filipinos who came home to work at the US $1.2 billion (S$1.5 billion) Solaire Resort & Casino in Manila Bay.

“The Philippines is booming at the moment, so I thought it was the right time to go back,” Mr Ragonjan said.Last week, the Philippines economy reported annual gross domestic product growth of 7.8 per cent in the first three months of the year, outstripping China to make it Asia’s fastest-growing economy.

Returnees like Mr Ragonjan are just a trickle compared to those still leaving the country, but the hope is that the more the country can draw the diaspora back to the Philippines, the more the entrepreneurial spirit that prompted them to leave in the first place can add fuel to the country’s economy.

Nearly two million Filipinos left last year to take on jobs such as seafarers, maids, labourers, hotel staff, and medical workers, forming one of the world’s largest diasporas of nearly 10 million migrants, about a tenth of the population.

The returnees are limited for now to a few sectors, including entertainment, tourism and information technology, but some hope that it marks the start of a stronger flow.

Still, President Benigno Aquino faces an uphill task to overturn criticism he is presiding over a jobless economic boom.

The economy is unable to create enough jobs for around a million new job seekers each year. A quarter of the labour force is unemployed or underemployed and the government is struggling to reduce poverty.

To turn the trickle of returnees into a flood, officials acknowledge the economic boom needs to be more broad-based.

Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan acknowledged that while real GDP per person has risen 11 per cent over the last two years, the gains have not been evenly spread. “Inclusive growth is not about averages, but about the lower part of the income distribution,” he said.

Still, in Manila’s bustling new casino, freshly returned workers, or overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), believe the time is ripe for the decades-long exodus to reverse.

“I really hope that our government will open more opportunities here, more reasons for our OFWs to come home,” said Mr Rosario Chavez, a gaming manager at Solaire, who spent three decades abroad. Reuters