KUALA LUMPUR -- The protection of property rights and
promulgation of the rule of law are the cornerstones of peace and order in
society. When such property rights are removed and unprotected, society can
quickly degenerate into chaos and disorder. For instance, your house or car is
also somebody else’s house and car, and he/she can take and occupy it anytime,
anywhere.
Measuring property rights protection across many
countries has been done by the Property Rights Alliance (PRA), a network of 74
independent, nongovernment, and market-oriented think tanks from 57 countries
around the world and is based in Washington, D.C.
PRA produces the International Property Rights Index
(IPRI) annual reports, which is a measurement of how governments in the
countries covered promulgate the rule of law and protect property rights,
public and private, physical and non-physical or intellectual.
The IPRI 2015 Report is launched today here at Park Royal
Hotel in the capital city of Malaysia. The event is jointly sponsored by the
PRA and the South East Asia Network for Development, which is a regional
project of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs in Malaysia.
The event’s theme is “Protection of Property Rights,
Economic Growth, and the TPP.” The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is included
in the theme because of its recent approval by the original 12 member-countries
including Malaysia. TPP of course will not be implemented unless each
member-country ratifies the agreement.
IPRI is derived by getting the score (one to 10, 10 being
the highest) of each country covered in three major areas:
1 Legal and Political Environment (LP), which includes
judicial independence, rule of law, control of corruption and political
stability;
2 Physical Property Rights (PPR), which includes
registration and protection of physical properties, and access to loans; and
3 Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), which includes
protection of IPRs, in particular patents and copyrights.
As a result, countries with high scores in two or all
three of these areas will have a high IPRI score and global rank.
In the 2015 Report, the top 10 from 1st to 10th places
are: Finland, Norway, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Singapore, Switzerland, Sweden,
Japan, Canada, and Netherlands.
For this piece, the focus will be on Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) member-countries that are covered in the IPRI
annual reports. Only 19 countries are in this table because Brunei was not
included in the IPRI 2014 and 2015 Reports while Papua New Guinea was never
included in all IPRI reports, past and present. (See Table)
APEC countries that were not included in the 2014 Report
because of some incomplete data were given this observation in that report:
1 Philippines: Between 2010 and 2014, the Philippines
IPRI score increased by +2.9%. In 2014 IPRI increased by +0.2 due to slight
increases in all components. LP increased by +0.2 points due to all four of its
items increasing in 2014. In particular, item Political Stability improved by
+22.7% between 2013 and 2014.
2 South Korea: Over the 2010-2014 period of analysis, the
South Korea IPRI score fluctuated around the value of 6.3. PPR data is missing
from the analysis completely and IPR is missing for 2010 and 2011... In
general, the overall IPRI value for South Korea is good and stable.
The Philippines’ jump in global rank from 77th in 2013 to
65th in 2015 is somehow impressive despite the flat score of 5.1 and 5.0,
respectively. The reason for the big jump is because many countries have
suffered significant decline in their scores from 2014 to 2015.
Within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations-6 that
are also APEC members and covered in this annual report, there is a mixture of
results over the years. The bad news is that (a) the gap in overall score
between high-ranked Singapore and low-ranked Vietnam was very wide, with the
average score of the former almost twice that of the latter; (b) Thailand and
Vietnam suffered significant declines in scores and global rank, both falling
by at least 19 notches in ranking from 2014 to 2015; and (c) Indonesia global
rank also fell significantly from 59th in 2014 to 70th in 2015.
The good news is that Singapore and Malaysia have managed
to retain their high scores and global ranking.
The results of this annual study should prod the
governments of the Philippines and other East Asian economies to remember the
main function, the raison d’être or reason for existence, of governments: to
enforce the rule of law, the protection of the citizens’ right to life (against
aggressors), right to private property (against thieves and destroyers of
properties), and right to liberty (against bullies and despots).
There is a positive relationship between economic
development and economic freedom, and the strength of property rights
protection. Civil society leaders should keep reminding governments of this
reality, and dissuade the latter from enacting and implementing various
programs that directly or indirectly erode the respect of private property.
Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. is the President of Minimal
Government Thinkers, Inc., which is one of the 74 think tank-members of PRA. He
is also a SEANET Fellow.
-----------See also:
BWorld 22, WESM, PEMC and search for competitive electricity prices, November 05, 2015
BWorld 23, ASEAN trade bureaucracies and Doing Business 2016 Report, November 07, 2015
BWorld 24, Traffic and Newton's 3 laws of motion, November 12, 2015
BWorld 25, Feed in tariff means expensive electricity, November 14, 2015
Inequality 26, Pew survey result on support for free market, July 27, 2015
Inequality 27, ADR Institute forum on poverty and growth, August 18, 2015
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