President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has conferred gold medallions of excellence on the 12 winners of this year’s Metrobank Foundation Search for Outstanding Teachers.

The Chief Executive, assisted by Metrobank Foundation chairman George Ty, Metrobank Foundation president Placido Mapa, Jr. and Commission on Higher Education Chairperson Ester Garcia, presented the awards to the 12 teachers in ceremonies held last night at Malacaņang’s Heroes Hall.

The 12 awardees, who were chosen from a field of 222 teachers nominated by public and private schools all over the country, were the following:

• Elementary level: Gloria G. Tutica of the President Manuel A. Roxas Memorial School in Roxas City; Norma B. Ubaldo of the Batangas City East Elementary School in Batangas City; Agapita A. Nery of the Tanauan South Central School in Tanauan City; Ruth A. Larracas of the Isabelo de los Reyes Elementary School in Manila; Victoria M. Francisco of the Zamboanga East Central School in Zamboanga City.

• High School level: Rosanni L. Palma of the Sorsogon National High School in Sorsogon City; Luzminda B. Chan of the Aloran Trade School in Aloran, Misamis Occidental; Maria Jesusa C. Despojo of the Dumaguete City High School in Dumaguete City; and Erlinda D.G. Antaran of the Makati Science High School in Makati City.

• College level: Dr. Leoncio P. Deriada of the University of the Philippines in the Visayas in Miag-ao, Iloilo; Dr. T. Valentino S. Sitoy, Jr. of the Central Visayas Polytechnic College in Dumaguete City; and Dr. Lita M. Colting of the Benguet State University in La Trinidad, Benguet.

Metrobank Foundation said the winners were chosen for their outstanding contributions to the teaching profession through personal integrity and character, instructional competence, and professional and community involvement.

It further said that the formal awarding ceremonies for the 12 Outstanding Teachers will be held on September 6, 2002 at the Metrobank Plaza, which serve as the highlight of Metrobank’s 40^th anniversary celebration.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo today stressed anew the need for the government to identify and focus on key milestone accomplishments that would create an impact on the economy in the next one and a half years.

"With peace and order moving, it is now time to create economic impact," the President pointed out during this morning’s Cabinet Meeting in Malacaņang where she outlined the mid-term strategic directions of her administration.

The President said that the roadmap that her administration will follow is patterned after that of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s "managed asset reflation" that is based on domestic consumption.

The "managed asset reflation," the President said, should be accompanied by prudent monetary policy, a ban on short-term foreign currency loans, which were the source of trouble during the Asian financial crash, a gradual reduction in public sector debt, and a balanced budget in three to four years.

The President said that under the new economic focus, the banking system will also be encouraged to avoid extending credit to unproductive asset sectors, such as luxury properties and industries that are already saddled with excess capacity.

Daniel Lian, a Singaporean-based economist with Morgan Stanley, has defined "managed asset reflation" as a controlled rise in domestic asset prices to encourage the shift from export dependence to new sources of domestic demand, notably capital-efficient small and medium-sized enterprises.

This is different from the "unproductive asset bubble" driven by excessive money, which characterized the economic overheating and subsequent crash in l997 and l998, the President said.

According to the President, Thaksin’s economic model, which is focused on domestic consumption and is veered away from multinational exporters, has helped increase Thailand’s growth from 1.8 percent to 3.9 percent this year.

Skeptics have said that the Thai model would not work, but Thaksin showed that it is possible to make an economic difference in just one year, the President said.

"The domestic demand story in Asia is now everybody’s business. It is now a key response, if not the key response to the calamitous collapse of the US economic model," the President said.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo today created a "pool of senior operatives" who will be directly responsible to her and whose function is to track progress of the implementation of key economic goals that she has set for the next 18 months.

During this morning’s Cabinet Meeting in Malacaņang, the President stressed that given the limited time left, Palace operatives must be deployed to "crack the whip" to compensate for bureaucratic red tape and fill in the shortfalls in the State of the Nation Address (SONA) targets.

In the same Cabinet Meeting, the President announced that for the next one and half years, the government would focus in accomplishing key economic milestones that would have an impact on the nation and the people.

These economic goals, the President said, would be accomplished using a road map based on the Thai model that focused more on domestic demand rather on export dependence.

The President has asked Executive Secretary Alberto Romulo and Avelino Cruz, chief presidential legal counsel, to delegate their day-to-day tasks to their senior deputies so that they can concentrate on coordinating the work of the "pool of senior operatives."

Aside from Romulo and Cruz, the other Palace operatives designated by the President are Angelito Sarmiento, Luis "Chito" Lorenzo, Gabriel Claudio, Tomas Alcantara, Eduardo Ermita, Rene Diaz, and Paul Dominguez.

The President said that the Palace operatives should track the progress on the government’s action on the following areas:

Trade and Industry Secretary Manuel Roxas II today said that he will lead an "equity road show" to generate interest among foreign investors in publicly-listed firms in the local stock exchange.

In a briefing in Malacanang after today’s Cabinet Meeting, Roxas said that the "equity road show" would be conducted in financial centers in Hong Kong and Singapore.

"During the road show, we will inform the investing community that the firms listed in the stock exchange are healthy, what their operations are and why they should be purchased as part of a bigger portfolio," Roxas said.

According to Roxas, the image of the country’s capital markets suffered because of the Best World Resources scandal during the previous administration and the stigma of the so-called "old boys club."

But steps and reforms have since been undertaken by the Securities and Exchange Commission under its present chairman, Lilia Bautista, and these will be part of the presentation during the road show, Roxas said.

Aside from Roxas, the equity road show delegation would be composed of Bautista, Philippine Stock Exchange officials Ernest Leung and Vivian Yuchengco and top executives of such big firms as San Miguel Corporation, Meralco, Jollibee, the SM Group, the Ayala Group that includes the Bank of the Philippine Islands, Ayala Land, Ayala Corporation and Globe Communications.

Roxas said that the executives of top Philippine corporations will present the prospects and challenges that their companies are offering to foreign investors.

Malacanang today assured that the government is seriously but quietly looking into allegations of sexual abuse among the detained women in the deportation camps by some police operatives assigned at the Tauao Police Station in Sabah.

"The government, through the Department of Social Welfare and Development, is seriously but quietly looking into reports of sexual abuse in the deportation camps in Sabah," Press Secretary and Acting Presidential Spokesman Ignacio "Toting" Bunye said during an ambush interview at Malacanang this afternoon.

Bunye said the Palace has not yet received any official report on this matter from the official mission headed by former Congressman Nur Jaafar. He nevertheless asked the media to be more prudent on handling the issue in order to protect the integrity and reputation of the women in the camps.

Jaafar has been designated by the President as the government’s crisis manager on the Sabah situation.

Bunye assured the media that once Malacanang receives the official report from the group of Jaafar which is now in Sabah, the President will immediately call for a press briefing.

"We don’t have any official report yet but the President will have a press briefing on Friday once she receives the mission report from Secretary Jaafar," Bunye said.

The nine-member Philippine team headed by Jaafar is expected to be back in Manila on Friday. The group left the country yesterday afternoon to go to Kota Kinabalu via Malaysian Airlines to visit the detention camps of Filipinos scheduled for expulsion and to recommend a better procedure for their repatriation.

Bunye also said the President personally thanked individuals and private companies who have contributed to ease the plight of the Filipino deportees from Malaysia by donating food, transportation and medical assistance.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo today announced that the days of syndicates diverting huge amounts of tax and duty payments would finally be over.

She said that the modifications in the present collection are being implemented after an exhaustive review and successful evaluation by the task force composed of members from the Department of Finance (DOF), the Bureau of Treasury (BTr), and the BOC – in close consultation with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), Clearing Officers Club, Inc. (COCI), Philippine Clearing House Corp. (PCHC), and Banker’s Association of the Philippines (BAP).

The President also cited Congressman Enrique Garcia of Bataan and BSP Governor Rafael Buenaventura who, she said, were also active advisers to the task force.

"The modifications which largely include the proposed changes by Congressman Garcia will be implemented by the BTr, BIR, BOC and BSP upon the approval of the Monetary Board," the President said.

The President said she expects that these changes in the tax and duty collection procedure will "completely put to stop the payment diversions of the syndicates and their cohorts."

The President pointed that the Bureau of Treasury, upon Congressman Garcia’s recommendations, will open deposit accounts with AABs ( Authorized Agent Banks) for all BIR and BOC collections.

She also stressed that the BIR accounts in all the AABs will have the following deposit account number 888-888-888, while the BOC accounts will have 999-999-999.

"The use of the uniform account numbers will allow payors to easily verify if their deposit/payment to BIR/BOC is being credited to the correct account," the President.

The President added that check deposits to the Bureau of Treasury’s accounts will be encoded, using a PCHC-prescribed transaction code which will provide the trail for proper monitoring and reconciliation between BTr, BIR/BOC, AABs and the PCHC.

She likewise said that her administration has requested the participation of the PCHC and the drawee banks to provide additional safeguards.

On the other hand, the President said the debit memo as an alternative mode of payment by the BAP shall be allowed to reduce the risk of check diversion.

"Furthermore, over-the-counter cash payments are to be limited to P10,000," she said.

The President said the government is continuing to evaluate all other modes of payment to strike a balance between the taxpayers’ convenience and the national government’s efficiency in revenue collection.

Specifically, she said that the administration is looking at the possibility of accepting tax and duty payments via ATMs with the BAP.

The National Disaster and Coordinating Council (NDCC) today told the Cabinet and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo that it would help in ensuring an orderly repatriation of Filipinos from Sabah,

In today’s Cabinet Meeting in Malacanang, Defense Secretary and NDCC Chairman Angelo Reyes said that the NDCC would also facilitate the return of the repatriates to their places of origin or resettlement and provide them with temporary shelters.

Specifically, Reyes said the NDCC, which is composed of several line agencies of the national government, will assist former Tawi-Tawi Congressman and now Crisis Manager Nur Jaafar in the following two objectives:

• to process, document and provide medical services in Kota Kinabalu and Sandakan to Filipinos for repatriation in coordination with the Malaysian government; and

• to facilitate the safe transport of repatriates from Sandakan to Bongao, Tawi-Tawi and other points of disembarkation, and subsequently to their places of origin or resettlement.

Reyes reported that a total of 2,971 deportees arrived on August 26 and August 29, 2002 in Tawi-Tawi. To date, a total of 84 deportees are left in the Kasulatan Holding Center, waiting for vessels to carry them to their places of origin.

A total of 1,887 were able to return home using kumpits provided by the provincial government of Tawi-Tawi, Reyes said.

Because of a large number of undocumented Filipinos still in Malaysia and scheduled for repatriation, the operations of the NDCC may continue in the coming months.

Records of the Department of Foreign Affairs showed that there were 167,936 undocumented Filipinos in Sabah as of September 2001.

The Malaysian amnesty program was announced in March 2002 and had been extended in the 2^nd quarter of this year to allow foreign nationals to voluntary return to their countries of origin.

The amnesty program was terminated when the Malaysian Immigration Act of 2002 was enacted into law.

According to DFA, the deportation of Filipinos has been suspended by the Malaysian government following the call of the President to Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

Finance Secretary Jose Isidro Camacho today said that the slight decline in the value of the peso vis a vis the US dollar is not indicative of a weakening economy but was caused by a number of reasons.

In a press briefing this afternoon in Malacanang after today’s Cabinet Meeting, Camacho said one of the reasons for the slide in value of the peso is what he termed as "seasonality" since there is a bigger demand for US dollars during the months of July, August and September.

"This is usually the season for importation and preparation for the Christmas buying season," Camacho said.

These are also the months when remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) are low, Camacho said, adding that normally remittances from OFWs go up before enrolment in May or June, and again before the Christmas season.

Camacho said that the Philippine peso has also been affected by the weakening of the other regional currencies, like the Thai baht and the Japanese yen.

But Camacho said he is confident that the peso would strengthen in the next few days. "If you look at the forecast or projections of many financial institutions, especially the foreign banks, most of them are forecasting an appreciation of the peso," Camacho said.

On the new round of oil price increase, Camacho said that this would bring us back to the oil price levels in November last year.

Camacho expressed the hope that the new increase in the price of oil products would not necessarily lead to increases in other services, especially transportation fares.

The Philippines is nowhere near recession and the economy is growing faster compared to this time last year when things were already looking good for the country.

This was the assessment given by Finance Secretary Jose Isidro Camacho during a briefing for Malacaņang reporters yesterday afternoon after a Cabinet meeting presided over by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Citing the growth rates of 4.5 percent in real gross domestic product and 5.2 percent in real gross national product from April to June this year, Camacho said "this is the fastest growth for a quarter that we had since year 2000."

Camacho also said concern over the budget deficit seems to have been blown out of proportion, adding that the government is committed to fiscal discipline and is sticking to a target that is keeping everybody on their toes.

He also said the Cabinet also made a policy decision to denominate deficit targeting as a percentage of GDP, which is practiced by many countries.

For this year for example, he said, the target is 3.3 percent deficit-to-GDP ratio.

"It is a policy objective that will allow us to achieve both economic growth and fiscal discipline at the same time, without one necessarily being sacrificed for the other," Camacho said.

The finance secretary also said the cost of borrowings as reflected in domestic interest rates remains at historical lows.

"It is quite surprising that as we saw interest rates drop from about 15 percent maybe 15 months ago or so, when we saw it break 10 we were very happy. When we saw it break 8, we were even happier. When we saw it break 6, we were quite ecstatic. And when we saw it break 5, it was likely we were in dreamland," Camacho said.