“Prostitution is now the fourth largest source of gross national product in the Philippines”

You have to be a little suspicious of this claim.

Prostitution in the Philippines has become a multi-million dollar industry and is now the fourth largest source of gross national product, a report on child pornography said Tuesday.

The Philippine National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) divides the economy into four sectors: agriculture, industry, services, and “net factor income from the rest of the world” (NFIROW). “Services” (under which prostitution presumably falls) is the largest of these sectors—for the last quarter of 2004 the figures (in millions of Philippine pesos) were agriculture 234, 151, industry 441,869, services 713,797, and NFRIW 94,992—yet bearing in mind the size of the transport, communications, banking, and tourism sectors I’d be surprised if “prostitution” could even claim fourth place within the services sector, let alone compete with food, beverages, tobacco (from the industry sector) or coconut, sugar cane, and fisheries (from the agriculture sector).

Now if “political prostitution” were included it would be a different story of course.

Comments

[Sassy]

"Now if “political prostitution” were included it would be a different story of course."

he he he he he

[test]

I don’t know. Why is this so hard to believe? The agriculture industry is really not that efficient or profitable. Nor are any of the other examples that you mentioned. Sugar cane-has been a money losing proposition for years since the US changed their trade laws. Ask anyone in Negros. And industry has been stunted for years because of, like you said, ‘political prostitution.’

As for the ‘services’ -we would all love to believe that the other categories beat prostitution are more profitable, but unfortunately transportation, communications, banking, are not. For example, much has been made about the call-centers, but really how much of the GNP or GDP do they account for? As for ‘tourism’ maybe tourism would be bumped up to a higher earning category but only if you include the sex industry that recruits foreign tourists. (Have you ever typed Filipina into Google? The results are… educational.) Even so we still lag significantly behind other SE Asian countries in terms of revenues from tourism.

I think the key to understanding why prostitution is so high up on the list is understanding the returns (dollars, yen, etc) prostitution brings in… a prostitute in Japan (what the OFW controversy with Japan was really about) can earn a much higher income then say a vendor in the tourist industry in Boracay. All of that translates into a bigger share of the services section of GNP.