’Tis the season to be merry

Bencyrus Ellorin

EVERYTHING’S abuzz around town.

Two days ago, I complied with my wife’s and daughter’s request to go malling. I found an excuse not to tag along with my girls, saying my “limbar” was acting up and ended drinking beer at Gerry’s Grill.

The good thing about Christmas is that people seem to forget the pressing issues of the day, except perhaps the traffic problem and for those on maintenance meds, getting away with lechon and booze is a serious issue. I skipped a number of parties making that as an excuse.

Hopefully, after the season I can report weight loss.

People with extra cash in their pockets troop to the malls. I figured, even inside the malls, human traffic is bumper-to-bumper.

People need respite.

But for slaves like us, there are deadlines to be met. Up my schedule are still two out-of-town trips and a number reports to complete.

Surviving the season is a happy problem. Soon, we will be preparing for the new year, hoping it will be better than this one.

We hope the economy sustains its growth.

We hope that the growth based on the “build, build, build” phenomenon that hit the public and private sectors will not resort in a bubble.

Any rapid growth is accompanied with risks, like economic bubble. One of the causes of bubble is the inability of host communities to provide the needed labor in terms of warm bodies and skills and the availability of raw materials.

Shortage in human power and materials could result in delayed project completion. Shortage could also drive project costs up. In buildings for example, higher cost of production results in higher rental or prices. An indicator of bubble are empty, dark buildings. In some malls, empty store spaces could be an indicator of bubble.

The other bubble that is not seen much in balance sheets of business is the cost to the environment. High demand for concrete raw materials often results in over extraction of finite resources like sand and gravel.

Strong government regulation should be sustained to mitigate environmental impacts of these extractive activities.

For what good are those big infrastructure if these are destroyed by extreme weather events. We have learned this lesson when Sendong left a trail of death and destruction six years ago.

We should not forget.