Technological Change as a Determinant of Economically Sustainable Growth: A Case Study of the Philippines

This paper outlines a private research program to be carried out under the aegis of the Faculty of Asian and International Studies, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. The approach embodied in the program percieves economically sustainable growth as dependent upon transformations of production processes at the industry level;i.e. technological change. These transformations then permit the industries to absorb much greater quantities of factor inputs - especially capital embodying technical innovations - without any reduction in productivity, and it is this particular pattern of markedly increased factor employment which characterises sustainable growth. In order to determine whether current growth rates are likely to be sustained the research program aims at establishing a framework to assess to extent to which technological change has occured in the Philippines. It aims to do this by measuring the changes in the patterns of inputs over the period 1985 - 1994 using changes in the input-output tables over that period. By examining major new industry developments since 1994, assessment of the possible transformations since that date, will be made. Then by using the Philippines-Japanese International I-O table, some attemp will be made to gauge the extent to which the structure of the Philippines economy is moving towards that of Japan. Finally obvious major structural weaknesses highlighted by this comparison, will be outlined, with a view to formulating policies which may help to address those weaknesses.