GMA bares ‘Bagong Bayani’ bonds for benefit of OFWs

TORONTO, Canada (via PLDT) — President Arroyo has revealed plans to launch the latest government-issued debt instruments, dubbed as "Bagong Bayani" bonds, targeting the estimated seven million overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) as buyers.

The President made the announcement at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre theater, which was packed by some 1,200 Filipinos employed here.

Mrs. Arroyo said the bonds were named after the OFWs, recognized as the "new heroes" of the Philippines for helping keep the economy afloat during times of crisis and slowdown.

The Bagong Bayani bonds will tap the estimated $6 billion in annual foreign exchange remittances of the OFWs.

The President said the bonds will soon be issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to support a new package of socio-economic benefits for all OFWs.

"The Bagong Bayani bonds will help mobilize savings of OFWs through investments in projects like housing back home," she explained.

Mrs. Arroyo exhorted the Filipino community to pursue their dreams of better lives for their families back home by subscribing to the bonds.

"Now is the time to prove our mettle as a nation and as a people," she said. "We can sustain our economic rebirth by thinking Filipino."

The President said she prefers calling the workers "overseas investors" and that the Philippine economy will be heavily dependent on their remittances.

She later told her audience that Philippine Ambassador to Canada Francisco Benedicto had donated Can$5,000 for the development of a Philippine Center to attend to the needs of OFWs in the province of Ontario.

NY roadshow for RP power sector

President Arroyo wound up her two-day visit to Canada and flew Wednesday night to New York City to lead the international "roadshow" for the Philippine power sector.

She is accompanied by Energy Secretary Vicente Perez, Finance Secretary Jose Isidro Camacho and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Gov. Rafael Buenaventura.

Aside from the roadshow for the National Power Corp. (NPC) privatization, which she is supposed to launch today, Mrs. Arroyo is flying to New York for the World Economic Forum (WEF), where she is a principal speaker anew.

Other world leaders invited to the forum are Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and German Chancellor Helmut Schroeder. While in New York, she will take the opportunity to have a bilateral meeting with Schroeder.

But even before the roadshow could get off the ground, Mrs. Arroyo disclosed that big British and Canadian companies engaged in the energy and power industries had shown interest in joining the international bidding for the Congress-approved privatization of NPC.

This the President learned during her one-day visit to London on Jan. 29 and in her just concluded state visit to Canada.

During a courtesy call on her by Ontario Premier Michael Harris at the presidential suite of the Fairmont Royal Hotel in Toronto yesterday, the President was informed that a Canadian trade mission in the power sector is being organized to visit the Philippines soon to look into the sale of NPC assets.

"We are privatizing the power sector – that’s going to be our big event in 2002. We still have a number of generation facilities that we want to privatize," Mrs. Arroyo told Harris.

"The Philippine Congress, before I left (Manila), finished the implementing rules and regulations (IRR). The bidding will be in June for the transmission sales of assets or corporation," the President said. – Marichu Villanueva