Camarines Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte, Commission on Appointments majority floor leader, wants Philippine embassies to study up on well-run state programs in their host countries that could serve as models for priority initiatives that the government is set to carry out.
In the committee hearing prior to the recent confirmation of several presidential appointees, he suggested to the appointed ambassadors to the Federative Republic of Brazil and the Kingdom of Belgium to find out more about projects in these countries that the Marcos administration has counterparts to, and then to inform Malacañang and the Congress on how the government could possibly replicate the success of these overseas endeavors.
For Brazil, he urged Ambassador Joseph Gerard Bacani Angeles to study the zero-hunger program that was launched in that South American country in 2003 and to see what features in this Brazilian initiative could likely be adopted in the implementation of President Marcos’ food security and poverty reduction agenda.
The elimination of hunger is on top of the President’s concerns, considering that Mr. Marcos had pitched in his nine-day working visit to the United States his vision for transforming the Philippines into an upper middle-income economy where there is “not one more hungry Filipino,” he noted.
As for Belgium, he proposed to Ambassador Jaime Victor Badillo Ledda to brush up on the system of e-governance in that West European country, and find out what features might be carried out locally, given that lawmakers, including him, are pushing the E-Government bill, in support of the President’s priority program on digital transformation.
The E-Gov’t measure is one of the 30 priority bills listed by Malacañang and the Congress as their common legislative agenda during the meeting of the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council last Oct. 10, the first time it was convened by Mr. Marcos.