‘RP economic recovery only a matter of time’

President Arroyo assured the Filipino people yesterday that their living conditions would improve following the country’s 5.2 percent economic growth in the first seven months of the year.

"It (economic recovery) is only a matter of time," she said.

Mrs. Arroyo said she learned from a reporter of the magazine Far Eastern Economic Review who interviewed her Monday that the international community has "a far more positive view" of the Philippines than the local media.

"And (the reporter) was saying that... if you read the papers here (it is) as if we are going from one crisis to another," she said.

"But the truth is we have a 5.2 percent (gross national product) growth rate. Our bonds are doing well in the international and local markets.

"Our inflation and interest rates are at historic lows. Our exports are up by 23 percent, while our imports grew by 20 percent. So definitely this is what’s happening in our economy. So it’s a matter of time before the people start feeling it."

Mrs. Arroyo said her administration has refocused on economic priorities after successfully restoring public confidence in the country’s peace and order.

"So really, it is not that bad, and what we have to do is to make sure that it is translated into employment," she said. "Because that’s the way it will translate to what the people can feel."

Yesterday, Mrs. Arroyo inaugurated two multimillion-peso local and foreign investment projects in Batangas and Makati City.

In Batangas, Mrs. Arroyo formally opened a P500-million food manufacturing plant at the Philtown Industrial Estate in Barangay Pagaspas in Tanauan.

Known as RFM-President Enterprises Corp., the plant is a joint venture of RFM Corp., one of the country’s biggest food and beverage companies, and Uni-President group of Taiwan.

Assisting Mrs. Arroyo in unveiling the plant marker were Jose Concepcion, RFM chairman; Jose Concepcion III, RFM president and chief executive officer; and Alex Ho, Uni-President unit group president.

In Makati, Mrs. Arroyo inaugurated the P200-million call facility of the American firm Sykes Enterprises in its Asian regional headquarters on the sixth floor of the Robinson Summit Center.

Mike Henderson, Sykes managing director for the Asia-Pacific region, told Mrs. Arroyo they would be employing 2,000 Filipinos by year’s end.

"Our Philippine operation is not so much as an offshore location but rather a critical hub for our integrated global services," he said.

"It hosts a primary hub for our unique Private ATM or asynchronous transfer mode, global communications network. This allows us unrivaled quality, availability and flexibility when handling customer calls from throughout the world."

Based in Tampa, Florida, Sykes operates 43 calling centers in the US, Canada, Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa.

It provides services delivered through multiple communication channels which encompass telephone, e-mail, web and chat.

An another development, the President has instructed her economic managers to study a revision of the country’s tariff policies to "promote the interest and welfare" of local manufacturers.

"So I was serving notice that we will have a very big prospect for a naphtha cracker again at last, that we’re going to allow that to grow, to nurture that and we’re going to also renegotiate our sugar tariff and put it in sensitive list," she said.

"And I’ve been telling this already to my economic managers unbridled globalization is really not in vogue anymore. The heyday was in 1992 when we had the East Asian economic miracle when the Philippines was the emerging green dragon," the President said.

She said the pace of world trade has slowed down after the mid-1997 Asian currency crisis, which had turned for the worse following last year’s terrorist attack on the US.

"So I’ve been telling our economic managers we must not be married to the idea that tariff cannot be revised and we must use our tariff policies to promote manufacturing," she said.

Mrs. Arroyo said the country would benefit from the revision of tariff, especially at a time that the government has a budgetary deficit.

"So I told (Trade and Industry Secretary Manuel Roxas II), we should remove our mindset that we will be ahead of our AFTA (Asian Free Trade Area) statutory obligations and we will maximize the avenues for exemption," she said.

"We use the rules to suit us. I have talked in my many speeches about unbridled globalization and all the more now that ... I have always said we should not go ahead of our statutory obligations."