The Specious Logic, Planning Implications and Opportunities of Balik Probinsya:

A Planner’s Perspective

Arturo G. Corpuz
(July 13, 2020)

The Philippine government’s Balik Probinsya Bagong Pagasa (BP2) program, formalized by
Executive Order (EO) 114 on May 6, 2020,1 is anchored on a policy of balanced regional
development. The program is a response to interregional disparities highlighted by the social and
economic dominance of Metro Manila or National Capital Region (NCR). Such dominance,
according to the EO, deprives other regions of development opportunities, contributing to lower
standards of living in these areas. Thus, based on its policy of balanced regional development,
the BP2 program seeks to transfer people and economic activities from NCR to other regions and
put in place infrastructure, housing and other services to attract investments and industries,
generate employment, reduce poverty and improve quality of life therein.

Critics, however, are skeptical about the BP2 program. They argue that government has limited
capability to provide the necessary conditions that will make the program work—centered on the
availability of decent-wage employment—and that existing market constraints (related to size,
access, affordability) limit investment opportunities outside NCR. These are valid concerns.

But there is a deeper issue plaguing the BP2 program. And it lies not with the difficulties in
providing the enabling conditions but with the specious logic of balanced regional development.

The specious logic of balanced regional development

Essentially, the BP2 program assumes that the closer the country is to balanced regional
development—the more equitable people and activities are distributed in space—then the more
equitable the quality of life, including reduced poverty in lagging regions. This is a flawed
assumption.

We already know that spatial (or interregional) inequity is the norm. Not only do people and
activities concentrate to form cities but these cities also form uneven networks of urban centers.
The efficiencies associated with sedentary livelihood, agglomeration and scale have led to the
ubiquity of unequal spatial distributions well before capitalism dominated the global economy
and this is still the case in today’s IT-driven world. Throughout history, the social-economic
geography of a region (or of any spatially-defined community for that matter) has been
characterized by imbalance—by the presence of one or a few large cities, several medium-sized
ones and a lot of much smaller settlements. The BP2 program will not change this pattern. Even
authoritarian states such as China, Cuba, and North Korea have not been able to make any
meaningful dent on this hierarchy despite purposeful and ideology-based policies intended to
reduce the economic dominance of its large cities.

1
Executive Order 114 (Institutionalizing the Balik Probinsya Bagong Pagasa Program as a Pillar of Balanced
Regional Development, Creating a Council Therefor and for Other Purposes), May 6, 2020.

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Even if population and activities can somehow be redistributed more evenly across regions, to
expect that this will also lead to a more equitable standard of living is foolhardy.2 There is simply
no congruence between spatial and social equity. (Gore 1984)

To be clear, spatial factors affect social conditions just as social factors affect spatial
distributions. They are related, even intrinsic to each other. But these relationships are based on
specific and historical reasons. By itself, spatial redistribution does not lead to an improvement
in quality of life; it must be inherent to an increase in productivity that leads to corresponding
increases in income and affordability. In the case of poverty reduction, it can only happen if the
poor are employed in a manner that provides them enough income to afford above-poverty
consumption levels, or if they are somehow given income support to the same effect. How they
are distributed in space matters only with respect to these first order conditions.

Not every place can succeed in improving the quality of life of its population, but an
improvement in quality of life can be experienced anywhere that can attract investments,
increase productivity, generate employment and increase household incomes.

Planning implications

What are the consequences of pursuing spatial equity with the expectation that it will lead to
social equity? Or what are the planning and development implications of implementing BP2
program’s policy of balanced regional development with the intent of improving quality of life
outside NCR? The quick answer is that regardless of the extent of balance (or imbalance), it
depends on how the projects involved affect production relations and consequent impacts on
employment and income. By focusing on balancing the distribution of people and activities
across regions, however, these primary drivers may be obscured resulting in tendencies to miss
out on more direct and effective initiatives.

First, there will be a tendency to ignore NCR’s large economic base and its myriad of supply
chains that can be instrumental in providing development opportunities within and outside the
capital region. This is consistent with the way EO 114 disregards any possible role that the
country’s largest metropolitan economy might have in the BP2 program, and how it portrays
NCR as the cause of interregional disparities to begin with. The first three “whereas” statements
of the EO state that NCR has the largest share (36%) of national output while accounting for
only 12% of total population (undoubtedly intended as evidence of imbalance), that its congested
areas are epicenters of the Covid-19 pandemic, and that its increasing population reflects the
unequal distribution of wealth and employment opportunities in the country. Further along, the
EO reiterates the problems with congestion in NCR, declares the need to transfer businesses and

2
To illustrate, if we use urban primacy (share of total urban population) as a measure of spatial inequity and GDP
per capita as an indicator of standard of living, we note that NCR’s urban primacy is 26.9% (2018). But many other
countries that have a much higher GDP per capita also have cities that are more primate than NCR such as Kuala
Lumpur in Malaysia (31.6%), Tokyo in Japan (32.3%), Auckland in New Zealand (36.8%), Vienna in Austria
(36.9%), and Tel Aviv in Israel (48.9%) to name a few, just as many other countries that have lower GDP per capita
have less primate cities like Katmandu in Nepal (23.9%), Addis Ababa in Ethiopia (19.4%), Maputo in Mozambique
(15.4%) and Mumbai in India (6.2%). (Indexmundi 2019)

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to create new urban centers outside the capital region, and identifies the voluntary movement of
individuals and enterprises from NCR to the rural areas as an initial task of the program.

But despite the diseconomies and other problems associated with its congestion, NCR has the
lowest poverty incidence, the highest average family income and is the largest domestic source
of remittances in the country. (PSA and UPPI 2019) However inefficient and unpleasant its
environment might be, it is still the country’s primary venue for poverty reduction. It should be
supported to improve on this role by building new infrastructure and increasing levels of service
and, as in other metropolitan centers of the world, by expanding its capability to absorb and train
more in-migrants for integration into its economy. This is the opposite of what the BP2 program
wants to accomplish and yet it has more factual and historical bases.

NCR’s share of national output has been increasing while its share of population has been
decreasing. This is the result of increasing specialization (more service-based) and integration
with neighboring regions. It is evident in the (1) continuing conversion of industrial sites in NCR
to residential and service-based mixed use developments, (2) increasing number of NCR workers
moving to more affordable housing outside the capital region, and (3) robust growth enjoyed by
NCR’s adjacent regions during the past few decades.

Interregional production relations are not easily unbundled and understood, especially since
economic and other functional flows can be masked by political boundaries, but clearly, the BP2
program’s zero-sum view of NCR with the rest of the country is too simplistic. Ignoring NCR’s
role in regional development can lead to missed development opportunities, not just within the
areas surrounding the capital region but even beyond.

Second, fixating on balanced regional development can lead to a tendency to ignore important
spatially blind initiatives. These include projects designed to serve segments of the population
who fall below minimum levels of basic services, wherever they may be located. These may also
include sectoral reforms that cut across regional borders such those that reduce the cost of doing
business, strengthen and protect property rights, increase competition and remove monopolistic
and rent-seeking practices, to mention a few.

Third, the policy of balanced regional development may justify strategies and projects simply
because they conform with literal or shallow interpretations of balik probinsya even if their
impacts are likely to be superficial. For example, EO 114 mentions an “upsurge in the
population” of NCR to support the program’s reverse migration strategy, but NCR’s growth rate
has been declining steadily for several decades now with the fastest growth taking place in
regional centers. Also, most of NCR’s population growth is due to natural increase (about 80%
in 2015) and not because of in-migration; a recent survey even reveals that between 2013 and
2018, NCR was a net outmigration region—more people left than people who moved in. (PSA
2013; PSA and UPPI 2019) Pursuing balik probinsya volunteers, a priority initiative of the BP2
program, is also likely to be a trivial and futile exercise. Typically, migration decisions are not
whimsical; they are based on compelling, life-changing motivations, require substantial
investments from migrants and their families, and are not easily swayed to return indefinitely by
government offers of free transportation and nominal allowances.

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Overall, the fixation with balanced regional development puts emphasis and priority on
redistributing people and activities to achieve some notion of spatial equity. This glosses over the
more direct approach of understanding the drivers of development and poverty reduction, and
looking for ways to make them work for the benefit of more people, wherever appropriate.

Opportunities

Despite its specious logic and the skepticism about government’s implementation capabilities,
the BP2 program enjoys a lot of support. This is understandable.

To begin with, the expression “balanced regional development” is easily associated with the
concept of equity and therefore of justice; these are ideas that almost everybody (especially
politicians) will agree with and support. Further, about 87% of Filipinos reside outside NCR and
therefore most are unlikely to be sympathetic to its overwhelming dominance over the rest of the
country. Even for many residents of NCR, those who experience the environmental and
economic penalties of congestion, it is very difficult to accept status quo. The shrinking globe,
the Filipino diaspora and increasing exposure to other, better managed cities of the world (e.g.
the unavoidable comparison of NAIA to other international airports) provide even more reason
to be negative about NCR; at best it can only be tolerated. Thus, with scotomized reasoning,
oblivious of the fallacy of equating a spatial condition to a social phenomenon, it becomes
almost instinctive to believe that balancing development among regions is the right thing to do.

These perceptions are reflected in President Duterte’s view of NCR as an imperial and congested
metropolis unworthy of further public or even private investments:

Imperial Manila controls everything, . . . I am fighting a monster. (Business Mirror 2016)

Manila is already saturated . . . If there are investors coming in, I will not allow building
for like factories in Manila not only it is a dead city but because I have to build a new
environment for the people [sic] . . . (Sunstar Davao 2016)

This view is obviously consistent with the BP2 program. Both focus development efforts outside
NCR. And both do not find any importance or urgency in addressing the congestion and other
problems of the capital region. (Why fix it if it’s a bad thing in the first place?) More important,
both make a lot of sense politically because they are aligned with popular perceptions. This is
why despite its flawed economic rationale, the program is likely to continue to enjoy substantial
public and political support. And therein lies planning and development opportunities.

The opportunities lie in utilizing the popularity of and government support for the BP2 program
to implement worthy projects that otherwise might be given less priority. Regional planning is
key to these opportunities because it is inherently multi-sectoral and spatially flexible. As
described in EO 114, the scope of the BP2 program covers a lot of ground: local industries, food
security and agricultural productivity, social welfare, health and employment, and infrastructure.
The discipline of regional planning, compared to a narrow sectoral approach, allows it to cover
these sectors simultaneously, to expand on them or focus on individual objectives and projects.
As far as spatial flexibility is concerned, a “region” is a catch-all territory, spanning urban and

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rural areas, and may be delineated according to planning requirements. Regional planning, for
example, can overcome the program’s bias against NCR through projects located outside the
formal boundaries, but are within the expanded functional territory, of the capital region (i.e.
Calabarzon and Central Luzon).

Because of its inherent flexibility in defining its sectoral scope and spatial coverage, regional
planning can accommodate projects that, as discussed earlier, might be ignored because they do
not fall neatly under the policy of balanced regional development. This flexibility also allows
proposed projects to be assessed comparatively as part of a larger, multi-sector package and, if
necessary, to be de-prioritized if deemed inconsequential or simply unfeasible under current
conditions (e.g. balik probinsya volunteers, stand-alone socialized housing, Subic-Clark railway).

Finally, there are opportunities that are not specific to regional planning but might gain
momentum from the popularity of the BP2 program. These involve projects that are applicable
nationwide but could be facilitated if piloted under the program. Among the priority initiatives
should be those that improve and institutionalize public management efficiency (e.g. by
increasing transparency, accountability, competence and merit-based compensation) with the
idea that one of the most effective ways of increasing quality of life is by improving the quality
of governance.◼

References

Indexmundi. 2019. https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/EN.URB.LCTY.UR.ZS/rankings;

https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD/rankings (Accessed 4 June
2020).

Philippines Statistics Authority (PSA) and University of the Philippines Population Institute (UPPI).
2019. 2018 National Migration Survey. Quezon City, Philippines: PSA and UPPI.
https://psa.gov.ph/sites/default/files/attachments/ird/pressrelease/NMS%20PR3.pdf (Accessed 19
May 2020).

Business Mirror. 2016. “Before his now-infamous US rants, Duterte hated ‘imperial Manila’ first.”
https://businessmirror.com.ph/2016/12/01/before-his-now-infamous-us-rants-duterte-hated-
imperial-manila-first/ (Accessed 12 June 2020).

Sun Star Davao. 2016. “Duterte to Bizmen: Invest Outside Manila.” Sun Star Davao, May 27, 2016.
http://www.sunstar.com.ph/davao/local-news/2016/05/26/duterte-bizmen-invest-outside-manila-
475972 (Accessed 10 September 2016).

Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). 2013. Quickstat on National Capital Region. March 2013.
http://www.psa.gov.ph/sites/default/files/attachments/ird/quickstat/ncr_7.pdf (Accessed 20 May
2020).

C. Gore. 1984. Regions in Question: Space, Development Theory and Regional Policy, London:
Methuen.