By Alexander Villafania
QUEZON CITY, METRO MANILA – As if continuing a previously delivered speech, President Benigno Aquino III centered his thoughts on the country’s underprivileged demographic.
Dressed in A simple barong and with an air of confidence, Aquino cited the achievements of his administration in his first year in office.
His opening salvo is on Filipinos going hungry, citing a report by the Social Weather Stations (SWS), which reported that 20 percent of Filipinos have “self-rated” themselves to be hungry, an updated survey indicated that figures have gone down to just 15.1 percent.
This is equivalent to about a million Filipinos, according to Aquino.
Interspersed in his speech, where he also focused on the country’s economic achievements and international reputation, Aquino kept returning to his programs on the poor.
Parts of his speech stressed that his administration’s achievements have benefited generally the poor in the country. For instance, when the Philippines was given positive credit ratings by international organizations, such as Moody’s and Standard & Poors, the country was able to reduce its interest in its credit payments.
The P23 billion saved from these interest payments can be used to fund the conditional cash transfer program that would assist women from poor families to support their children’s education as well as to gain access to healthcare.
Twice, Aquino highlighted a story about people he met during his campaign, who complained that political candidates would never really do anything to solve the problem – that being poor was where they were destined to be. It was here where Aquino stressed that he pushed certain agencies to cut down their expenses, especially those that have not shown any marked achievements and whose expenses caused more problems.
Aquino also issued a warning against anyone who had not paid taxes – the lifeblood of government projects. He revealed that of the 1.7 million self-employed and professional tax payers, the government collected only P9.8 billion. This is is equivalent to only P5,783 per taxpayer, or a net monthly income of P8,500 that is below the minimum wage.
Food security is another issue that Aquino also focused on. He said that he aims to reduce the need to import rice and instead push to invest in improving farming technologies to enable more rice production in the Philippines.
These programs should also reduce graft in the rice importation business, which he stressed has been plagued by overimportation.
“Una, hindi tayo aangkat ng hindi kailangan, para lang punan ang bulsa ng mga gustong magsariling-diskarte ng kita sa agrikultura. Ikalawa: ayaw na nating umasa sa pag-angkat; ang isasaing ni Juan dela Cruz, dito ipupunla, dito aanihin, dito bibilhin,” Aquino said.
Unemployment, which was rated to be at eight percent last April 2010, had been lowered to 7.2 percent a year later, a slight difference but still significant, according to Aquino. He stressed that there are still new jobs being opened that have not yet been filled by the needed manpower. As such, he is pushing the several agencies related to job generation and education to work together in resolving job mismatch.
One program that Aquino was very particular with was the “Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program” (4P), which he said would help in reducing the poverty problem in the country.
Of the 2 million poor Filipino families that were registered, 1.6 million are already getting their benefits. He expects 2.3 million Filipinos will benefit from the program by the end of the year. This is over 90 percent of the estimated total of poor families in the Philippines, pegged at 2.6 million, according to the National Statistics Office (NSO).
“Bubukas ang marami pang pintuang pangkabuhayan sa pamamagitan ng turismo; sisiguruhing hindi magugutom ang Pilipino sa pagpapalakas ng agrikultura. Ang mga dating kinakaligtaan, bibigyang-puhunan ang kinabukasan,” Aquino said.
