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Recently, I had an exclusive interview with President
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at the presidential palace. It was one of
the very few she granted a journalist this year. I am running
portions of the interview (with some editing) in three parts. Here
is the first part:
Q: Where and what will the
Philippines be in the year 2010?
PGMA: My vision goes beyond the
end of my term in 2010. We will take our place among the First-World
countries in 2020. I would hope that by the end of my term in 2010,
we would have made substantial progress toward that.
By 2010, we should have hopefully
$2,000 per-capita income. Our Medium-Term Plan says that we will
have 7-percent economic growth by then.
Seven years of 7-percent economic
growth will make us graduate from poverty.
We would like to bring it
(poverty incidence) down from 28 percent (of families) in 2000 to 18
percent in 2010.
As for competitiveness, we will
be in the top one-third (among 140 countries) in competitiveness
ranking. (To do that), we would want to invest more than P1 trillion
in infrastructure.
Q: An obvious strength of your
administration has been your success on the economic front. To what
do you attribute your success?
PGMA: Focus. I’m very, very
focused. Completely focused and disciplined on the economic goals. I
don’t get caught up in every political barb that comes my way. I
have goals and then I really track compliance with these goals. And
it’s not been easy to comply with the goals.
For instance, we had goals on
reducing our fiscal deficit, reaching a balanced budget by 2010,
which the economic managers want to happen in 2008.
To do that, we had to raise
taxes. That’s stepping on a lot of toes. The (tax) legislation is
not pleasing for everybody. The antitax cheat drive is not pleasing
to everybody. And then getting value for money for the service, you
have to drive the civil servants, reduce bureaucracy and red tape,
improve services to the consumers and to the business community.
And that’s why my popularity
suffered. But it’s a price worth paying to see the Philippines
turn around. So we have been able to produce five million new jobs.
In 2001, for instance, I said
that ICT would be a growth sector. But we had to improve the cost of
connectivity and we had to improve the human resource development.
And here, six years later, from a
virtually nonexistent industry, we have half a million (seats)
already, not just in call centers but in the BPO (business-process
outsourcing) industry.
My single-minded focus is on
delivering genuine reform, paying for the vital investments that are
consistent with a modernizing nation. They’re not easy, but
they’re essential.
When I had to work on the
value-added tax (VAT), I was very unpopular. I could have just taken
the easy way out. But then, the economy would perish. So it’s
reform or perish. I would rather choose reform. Somebody else could
pursue the populis policies that would eventually fail. I wouldn’t
want to do that.
Q: The Philippines has become one
of the most competitive areas for call centers . . .
PGMA: They just talk only about
India and the Philippines (when it comes to call centers). Everybody
else has a very minor share. We are going to earn from
business-process outsourcing $3 billion. This year, we will have
half a million jobs (in call centers and BPO). In the year 2000,
there were only about 2,000 (jobs in call centers).
Q: How come we’re so
competitive now?
PGMA: It’s the (lower) cost of
connectivity. And our human resources. Good English-speaking, very
good human resources. The same caring that makes our nurses famous
aside from their competence. We have a very short solution time¯1.4
(calls) is our average solution time, shorter than India’s and
other countries’.
(To be continued)
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