Proceedings of the first Independence congress : held in the city of Manila, Philippine islands, February 22-26, 1930 / Published under the direction of Dean maximo M. Kalaw, executive secretary, University of the Philippines.

ECONOMIC SECTION

59

Briefly, taking as a basis the exports in 1928, which aggregated P310,109,092, the decrease would amount to
P113,923,018, that is, 36.7 per cent.
It is not easy to imagine what the sudden elimination of
over one-third of the total amount of money at present entering
our country as price of our exports would mean to the Philippine people. There are economists who maintain that the
per capita importation can with a sufficient degree of accuracy
be taken as indicative of the degree of progress and standard
of living in the Philippines. In maintaining this, they argue
that practically everything required for a certain elevation of
the standard of living, such as industrial fuel, paper, metal,
and manufactures of metal, and practically all material for
dress are imported in the Philippine Islands. Making the
necessary adjustment, the per capita importation in the Islands
was P8.62 in 1901 and P6.24 in the year next preceding the
establishment of free trade, 1908. Subsequently, it gradually
went up as high as P13.42 in the year of plenty, 1921. It
went down again the year after that and then it went
up steadily until it reached P12.82 in 1927 and P14.18 in
1928. Now, it is an axiomatic truth that a country cannot
import more than it exports. Consequently, if the exports of
the Philippine Islands decreased 36.7 per cent upon the elimination of free trade, the imports will decrease at least in the same
proportion. This means that the per capita importation will
decrease over one-third; that is, that upon the abolition of free
trade, the standard of living in the Philippine Islands will go
back to what it was in the first years of the American occupation.
As regards taxes, I only wish to mention the following:
At present, the proportion between the per capita taxation and
the per capita income in the Philippine Islands is almost equal
to the proportion between the two in the United States. In
the case of independence with the abolition of free trade, our
per capita income would decrease considerably, as we have
explained, while the per capita taxation would be increased
by the new requirements and needs of an independent govern