The President’s first State of the Nation Address was one whose style my friend Teddyboy Locsin would likely not praise. But he, and others who prefer some mellifluous cadence in such important speeches, cannot deny that it was packed with substance.
So many policy statements and programs were actually said that I wonder why film director Brillante Mendoza did not approve of a power-point format, if only to highlight the specifics that packed the President’s Sona. Then again, maybe the President himself did not want visual aids that could distract him more than the audience.
For one, he spoke directly to the people, and never pandered to the likes or dislikes of the legislators in front of him. He even chided them jokingly when he casually remarked that none of them supported his presidential bid.
The promises were so plentiful. On the revenue side, he wants to lower income taxes, both personal and corporate. That was met by thunderous applause, even if most of the instant audience in the Batasan do not really deserve any income tax break.
It is the expenditure side that overwhelmed us all. Those promises will cost government plenty, and while President Duterte did not promise a time frame of immediacy, the bill can be quite daunting.
There will be time, in future articles, to discuss all these. For now, let me just cite an example: when he said that he wants to give a rice subsidy to the poorest of the poor, now enrolled in the Four Ps program, a World Bank initiative adopted first by GMA, expanded by PNoy, and to be continued by Duterte.
Mentally, I calculated the tab while listening: at 4.5-million family recipients (the DSWD-stated 4P beneficiaries) and one sack of 50 kilos of rice each, which costs (NFA release price) P1,250 apiece, that’s a staggering P56,250,000,000. That’s almost the maximum amount that DSWD gives to the “pantawid-pamilya” recipients, which is P1,400. Including administrative costs, Congress allocates P67 billion for this program.
If we add a full sack of rice to this, that’s going to ante up to P123 billion.
But there are more promises to keep: increasing the take-home pay of policemen and soldiers, free irrigation, subsidies for seeds and fertilizers, as well as help to fishermen. And a lot of infrastructure projects to ease the daily “kalbaryo” of commuters in the harried and hassled metropolis.
Again the lines of Robert Frost’s immortal poetry came to mind as I sat in the Batasan: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep.”
The President has set, for himself and his government, a Herculean task ahead. But these are things that the ordinary Filipino had long been aspiring for, and long been denied. They are things they see around them when they work in other countries, and they wonder why their government could not provide even a reasonable modicum of these.
Just closing the infrastructure gap of our country as compared to its Asean neighbors like Thailand, Malaysia, never mind Singapore which is already so First World, will take at least 10 years per DBM’s Ben Diokno, assuming we can afford to spend P900 billion a year from hereon. That is something the Finance department under Sonny Dominguez might find difficult to raise all by itself. Clearly, the private sector must participate. Even more clearly, we will need foreign capital in loans and grants. Given the turmoil, both economic and political, that has roiled many of the usual sources, Japan, US, the EEC and the lending institutions they supervise, that does not seem too forthcoming. And given the deep freeze our relations with China has been pushed into by the WPS issue and the handling of the Aquino II administration, that too may be rather testy—unless President Duterte succeeds in fresh diplomatic initiatives.
Miles and miles to go before he sleeps, that’s what President Duterte has set himself, such that his vow to step down once a federal set-up is achieved is something the public will not likely agree with.
For this article, let me make a suggestion with regard to promise to give rice to the poorest of our poor: Because the cost of the cheapest 50 kilogram bag of rice is (1,250 times 4.5-million recipients) some 56 billion pesos, how about giving a half-sack, or 25 kilograms per month as rice subsidy? That brings down the bill to P28 billion.
Since the 4Ps recipient must perforce to buy his staple food anyway, which is rice, convert part of his cash subsidy to a rice subsidy. But for remote areas where the logistical cost can be a huge problem, DSWD can issue rice subsidy coupons to be honored by rice retailers who are after all licensed by NFA under its regulatory power.
Thus, assuming DSWD charges the half-sack entirely to the cash subsidy of P1,400 per month, the beneficiary gets P525 in the form of a rice coupon equivalent to 25 kilos, and the P875 in cash. Thus the government does not spend more, other than the administrative and some logistical costs.
For NFA, there is assurance of a ready market and in keeping with its mandate of serving the poor, since the rich and middle class will not likely buy NFA rice anyhow. At 2.25-million bags of rice, that is a total of 27-million bags, or the equivalent of 1.35-million tons per annum. That’s about as much as the total shortfall between our current production versus the annual demand for rice. With faster turn-over, NFA’s turn-around warehousing and other logistical costs could be affordable, and the Duterte concept doable at least incremental expense.
There are a lot of policy issues and programs that packed President Digong’s first Sona, enough to last his entire six-year term. It would be quite interesting to dissect some of these in future articles.
But for now, every Filipino must be finally proud to have a leader who knows what they feel and what they need most.
