How Indonesians Became Richer than Filipinos

That hasn’t surprised those following emerging markets closely, though the Philippines’ equity market has outperformed Indonesia’s in the last ten years. Nor has it been a surprise seeing the Philippines leave behind the old glory days of the 1960s, and be bypassed by the one Asian country after another in per capita GDP.

“There was a time when the Philippines was seen as an Asian trendsetter, and fashionable young Malays would sport the barong, the formal embroidered shirt favored by Filipinos, to look cool,” writes Ruchir Sharma in Breakout Nations. “But that was back in the 1960s, when the Philippines had the second highest per capita income in Asia, behind only Japan. The nation’s fortunes shifted since then.

By the 1970s South Korea and Taiwan had passed the Philippines in per capita income terms. Malaysia and Thailand followed in the 1980s and China in the 1990s. Then in 2009, in a moment the Manila elite thought it would never see, Indonesia’s boom made Indonesians richer than Filipinos for the first time in history.”

That’s a trend that continued beyond 2009. In 2016, Philippines per capita GDP was close to two-thirds of that of Indonesia’s; the gap is even bigger in ppp. What has Indonesia done right that Philippines’ hasn’t?

To begin with, it has managed to shake off the economic and political instability that came with the breaking of the Asian financial crisis – a crisis which hit Jakarta hard, with GDP falling close to 20 percent over the 1997-1998 periods.

Moreover, Indonesia managed to bring its government debt down, which accounts roughly for 60 percent of that of Philippines. Then there’s the battle against corruption and cronyism, big killers of emerging market growth, though it still remains high compared to that of China and India.