BETTER DAYS
Listening to the one hour and a half second State of the Nation Address (SONA) of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., we looked back at what the administration has done in its first full year in office and its plans for the coming year. Emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic, the start of the Marcos presidency was challenging, to say the least. At the end of 2021, the country’s unemployment rate stood at 7.8 percent. By the end of 2022, this went down to 5.4 percent. The tourism sector, which was among the sectors that suffered the most during the pandemic, has also rebounded from its slump. For the first half of 2023, the President reported that we had welcomed three million international visitors. This represents 62 percent of the 4.8 million target for the entire year.
Inflation continued to ease from 8.7 percent in January 2023 to 5.4 percent in June. In 2022, our economy grew by 7.6 percent. In the first quarter, the growth rate was pegged at 6.4 percent. The President noted that we are still within our full-year target of six to seven percent and that we are still considered to be among the fastest growing economies in Asia and the world.
The right policies, programs and investments must be made, not only to maintain this growth trajectory, but to build the foundation for sustainable growth in the long term. We were pleased to hear from the President about giving priority to investments in both public infrastructure and in developing the capacity of the people.
For agriculture, the President talked about boosting agricultural production through consolidation, modernization, mechanization and improvement of value chains. The selection of new infrastructure projects is very timely and forward looking. Included in the list are projects related to digital connectivity, energy, airports, seaports and mass transport.
We thank the President for not losing sight of our health sector and for ensuring the distribution of the allowances due to our healthcare workers, who sacrificed a lot during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Our push for innovation as a key component of success for businesses, particularly the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) was also given a huge boost with the President’s pronouncement about the need to foster innovation alongside the culture of entrepreneurship. And to ensure that the workforce will be equipped with the skills necessary to fill up the requirements of employers, the President recognized the need for their continuous reskilling and upskilling.
The digitalization of government will also contribute to the efforts to make it easier to do business in the country while providing our people with better services. The President also promised to improve the country’s internet infrastructure to improve internet speed and to provide all parts of the country, including the remote areas with internet connectivity.
All of these I mentioned in the second SONA of the President are part and parcel of our Tatak Pinoy advocacy, which aims to grow and empower Filipino industries so that they can produce complex, high-quality, high-value products and make them more globally-competitive. We thank the President for including our Tatak Pinoy bill among his list of priority legislation for Congress. The recognition by the President of the importance of this measure bodes well for the future of our industries and service providers in their efforts to expand, gain recognition and penetrate the world market.
Tatak Pinoy is about enhancing the capabilities of the Filipino workforce through reskilling, upskilling and lifelong learning in order to make them more competitive and responsive to the requirements of employers, including potential investors in search of qualified personnel. It is about encouraging innovation so that Filipino industries will be able to produce unique, high-quality, globally-competitive products that are up to par with international standards. It is about diversifying our exports and making our economy more robust and prosperous.
The Tatak Pinoy bill hews closely to the Philippine Economic Development Plan 2023 to 2028 and the new Philippine Export Development Plan, which are the building blocks to achieve strong economic growth. In pushing for Tatak Pinoy, we always emphasize the need for close collaboration between the government and the private sector in order to achieve our goal of bringing the Philippines closer to the ranks of the industrialized nations.
We have already conducted four hearings on the Tatak Pinoy bill in the Committee on Finance and we will hold two or three more before wrapping up and preparing our committee report for sponsorship before we start our deliberations on the 2024 national budget. With the backing of the President, we expect to see even greater support from our colleagues in the Senate and the House of Representatives for this important measure. (Email: [email protected]| Facebook, Twitter & Instagram: @sonnyangara)