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By Angelo S. Samonte, Reporter
President Gloria Arroyo said
successful implementation of fiscal measures by her administration
is the country’s best shield against the current global economic
crisis.
The Chief Executive was defending
her administration’s fiscal tack amid calls to lower or scrap the
value-added tax on oil to ease the burden caused by escalating fuel
and food prices.
President Arroyo made the
statement in a speech welcoming delegates to the fourth Ambassadors,
Consuls General and Tourism Directors Tour in Malacañang on Monday
morning.
Mrs. Arroyo said her
administration spends plenty of time and resources to train and
retrain a growing work force for “specific tasks and for whatever
challenges a wayward world economy may throw at us.
“And because we have been
prepared for it, we have been able to shield our nation from the
worst effects of food and fuel crisis worldwide.”
The President told the 320
Filipino-American and Filipino-Canadian delegates that the current
economic crisis sweeping the world had not caught the Philippines
unprepared.
She said her hard decisions to
impose bold fiscal-reform measures created more revenues, which are
now being used by the government for rehabilitating infrastructure
such as bridges, highways, airports and other facilities intended to
create new jobs.
“With more money we can spend
now a lot on health and education,” the President added. She said
the policy reforms that she has instituted will now benefit the
majority of Filipinos.
“Had we acted differently or
not acted at all, all would be lost today,” Mrs. Arroyo added.
“So we remain committed to the path we have taken, the best
solution is the one that has worked,” she said.
According to the President, her
successor will inherit “a more stable economy” when she steps
down in 2010 as the government remains on track and firmly focused
on getting the country ready for the next generation.
To be able to maintain the
respect of international finance, she said, the government is
widening the fiscal reforms by bringing interest rates down and
making the Philippine peso stronger than its current status.
She also told the delegates that
in the last three years that Trade Secretary Peter Favila headed the
nation’s competitiveness council, the government was able to
convince the international financial agencies on the progress in the
Philippines, raising its international credit rating.
“We are happy that the world
competitiveness yearbook, the latest edition, shows a remarkable
improvement of five notches in the rating of the Philippines,”
Mrs. Arroyo said.
The soaring prices of food and
oil have prompted several lawmakers, militant groups and the
Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines to ask for a
review of the expanded tax law with an eye toward reducing or
scrapping the current 12-percent tax.
The government has been lukewarm
to the calls and instead announced plans to continue spending excess
revenues from the oil tax on cash subsidies, upgrading of public
hospitals and rehabilitation of typhoon-ravaged areas.
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