Jehovah Nissi B.

Botardo

A1B

What critical issues are raised from the examination of development problems and
prospects facing Brazil? How do you compare the Philippines with this country in terms
of the issues raised?

At the beginning of the article, it has been clearly stated that there are two faces of
development in Brazil. Although there is a world-competitive industry, there also exists the
stagnant, protected sectors. Also, modern agriculture coexists with low productivity traditional
practices. With this, we can say that Brazil is indeed a country achieving growth for they have
made economic and social progress. Even if this is the case, they are still facing many challenges
that hinder them from achieving true development. First and foremost, the country is facing the
issue of poverty which is very common to every nation. In Brazil, there is a higher percentage of
its population which are living in poverty. Some of its population has been living in extreme poverty
with less than $2 a day which is worse than other low-income countries. Secondly, it has been
stated that Brazil has extremely high economic inequality and social divisions that serves as a
threat for the country to achieve further progress.

Moreover. such problems in inequality appears to be in income as well as land and other
assets. It was mentioned there is a high inequality when it comes to income distribution which
results to extreme poverty. Other assets such as land has also been unequally distributed which
places the control to powerful people. Also, land reform acts have not been effective which places
farmers in unfortunate situations. Also, Brazil faces struggles about indebtedness and
infrastructure. With this, they have been working on how to improve the quality of their industries.
Another problem experienced by Brazil is the high and increasing taxes that could have greatly
affected their formal sector employment growth. The increasing rates of their taxes has become
a burden for their citizens and as many as half of their labor force works in the informal sector. As
for the other social indicators, Brazil has been encountering problems with their life expectancy
compared to other countries and the country suffers from high incidence of child labor.
Sustainability of development has also been difficult for Brazil due to the destruction of their
forests and other ecological assets due to social and economic activities. Lastly, Brazil has been
facing issues with social inclusion. Most of the underprivileged people in this country are African
and there exists the issue of racism or racial discrimination.
 In comparison, Philippines and Brazil face related or similar critical issues which hinder
them from achieving genuine development that could be measured not just based on economic
growth but through effective reduction of poverty and other social and non- social indicators. As
for the similarities, both countries do face the issue of poverty. A large part of the population of
both countries are living in poverty. If the underprivileged people in Brazil are living with less than
$2 a day, underprivileged people in the Philippines on the other hand live with 60 pesos a day.
Just like Brazil, inequalities of many kind are also present in the Philippines. There is a clear social
division which are determined by the unequal income distribution. The problem of unequal land
distribution has also been obvious in the Philippines as people face conflicts due to these
resources. Many lands are actually owned by powerful people in the government or people in
private sectors instead of distributing it to our dear farmers who strives to have good quality of
harvests in their agricultural production.

In addition, Philippines is also indebted in foreign and domestic sources which results to
a slow economic growth. Furthermore, Philippines has been facing problems with infrastructure
as well. In fact, the current administration has been implementing projects and policies like “Build,
build, build” in order to improve the quality of the country’s infrastructure and industry. As for the
social indicators, the Philippines has also been encountering problems with life expectancy with
the given rate of 69 years by 2016 which is lower than other Asian countries. In addition, child
labor is also very present in the country as many children are forced to work due to poverty.
Children especially in rural areas are forced to help their families in their farms and they are even
not privileged of going to school. Also, destruction of natural resources has also been very present
in the Philippines due to social and economic activities. In addition, there are social
discriminations in the Philippines as well. Such differences in race, abilities and social status
became avenues for people to discriminate or exclude other individuals.

In conclusion, we can see that Philippines is not far from Brazil when it comes to the
problems or issues faced based on the given comparisons. Also, our country has also
experienced some economic growths for the past years but there was not much social
development especially when it comes to the quality of life of most of the Filipinos. Just like Brazil,
our country also hopes and strives for true and multidimensional development despite all the
circumstances. For this to happen there must be continuous efforts in addressing the critical
issues which includes poverty, unemployment, inequality, social discrimination, human
development and environmental sustainability.