Why our neighbors leaped forward, and we Filipinos stagnated? Philippines must learn the lessons from the past debts, the corruption  stories, un-controlled population, tax-evation, bribery, massive frauds - stagnated Philippine economy which lasted over 25 years.

Between 1990 and 2005, annual per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate was the lowest in Southeast Asia, lower than even those of Laos, cambodia and Myanmar.

Peter Wallace, an influential consultant, deconstructed the 73% growth rate recorded for the Philippines in 2007. According to him, the figure actually masks something negative: the fall of imports by 5.4% GDP looks good, if we have less imports.

And here's the reality, more poor people in 2007 than 2000, more without job and decline of family income.

Indeed, the magnitude of poor Filipinos rose to its highest level of poverty threshold: of a population of 84 million in 2006, 27.6 million Filipinos fell below the national poverty line of P15,057.

For many Filipino the main problem confronting the stagnant economy is the 3 Big Letters G-M-A. I believe she plays the big part of it. Part from the past collective responsibility of the last five administrations.

In 1990-2005, the Philippine's economic growth record was the worst in SE Asians.

Unemployment and under-employment continue to rise even when the conomy is growing  by 5-6%. Economists say it was due to low capital accumulation. That means, we do lack of investments.

The Marcos' regime is often pinpointed as the culprit behind under-development. But the collapse of industry must also be noted took place amidst a political crisis that marked the transaction from dictatorship to the presidency of Corazon Aquino. Aquino adopted the so called "model debtor strategy" in the hope of continuing to have access to international capital market. By these, instead the government picks up the investment slack, its resources flowed out in debt service payments in the period of 1986-1993 just to left the Philippines yearly in debt service payment with total amount to $30 billion.

Because we focused to debt repayment and practice of incurring debt to pay off the old instead of focusing onto the capital expenditures.

In 2005, according to World Bank data, 29% of the government expenditures was devoted to interest payments to both foreign and domestic creditors and only 12% to capital expenditures.

The Global Competitiveness Index ranks the Philippines at only 11 out of 131 countries, rating the country particularly poorly on a majority of the infrastruture indicators.

Hopefully, Philippines must see the shadow of the past, the difficult reasons why the country is having a hard time to emerge from its long night of stagnation.