ies. In some countries, the massive increase in income flowed almost exclusively to a political and economic elite. In other countries, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria as examples, much of the massive oil earnings were channeled into structural change and infrastructure development that led to distributional changes, which in turn led to improvements in the living standard for the majority of the populations in those countries.
A country may also implement changes that contribute to the process of development, and still not attain development. The Philippines led by President Coroson Aquino in the 1980s implemented a land reform scheme that represented a significant structural change. If this change had been accompanied by an increase in the total output of the economy, development would have occurred. As it happened, the Philippines fell on hard economic times, and the positive structural change of land reform that could have contributed to development largely was neutralized by the negative economic growth. A country experiences both economic growth and development when the living standard of a majority of its population increases. The condition implies the presence of intensive economic growth.
The failure of the Philippine economy to provide intensive growth in the 1980s was widely attributed to a failure by the government of the day to meet the need for change (Tiglao, 1991, pp. 41-42). The national economic development plan for the 1987-1992 period called for an average annual growth rate of 6.8 percent; an objective that was not attained (Hunter, 1994, p. 1091). A revised development plan was introduced by President Ramos in 1993 (Riedinger, 1994, pp. 139-146). The focus of this plan was on the privatization of public sector industries, and the development of a solution to the country's energy supply problem. In the ensuing years, Ramos also relaxed trade and business regulation. Foreign corporations, as an example, ar...