President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo today asked the public to allow the Presidential Fact-Finding Commission investigating the escape of Indonesian terrorist Fathur Roman al-Ghozi and two others to proceed with its work unhampered and refrain from engaging the rumor mill.

"Speculations will get us nowhere and will play into the hands of the enemy by fragmenting our efforts," the President said in a statement.

The President said Philippine National Police chief Director General Hermogenes Ebdane will coordinate with the fact-finding commission to come up with a unified system of handling the public disclosure of findings as these evolve in the investigation "in a manner that will not prejudice ongoing operations."

Ebdane has been named by the President to lead a task force that would hunt down the escaped terrorists.

"Since the commission has officially begun its work, it must be at the forefront of the public information aspect of this case," the President said. "Let us allow the fact finding commission to sift through all the facts and allegations and come up with its own judicious findings and recommendations."

The President ordered all PNP units to concentrate on the job of tracking down Al-Ghozi and his cohorts and refrain from engaging the rumor mill.

Agriculture Secretary Luis Lorenzo today said that the Philippines and Indonesia are in the forefront of efforts within the World Trade Organization (WTO) to institutionalize special safeguard mechanisms (SSM) to protect developing countries from unfair competition from developed or industrialized nations.

In a press briefing in Malacanang this afternoon, Lorenzo said that an enhanced SSM and the adoption of the strategic products (SP) concept would be beneficial to the country’s agriculture sector since these products would be allowed minimal tariff reductions on account of their importance to food and livelihood security and rural development.

Lorenzo said that the SP concept has been a major item in the Doha Development Agenda on the full integration of special and preferential treatment of products from the developing countries.

He explained that under the SSM, developing countries like the Philippines can impose additional special tariffs, on top of regular tariffs, when our industries are threatened by unhampered importation of cheap products coming from developed countries.

"Given the intransigence of the developed countries to still maintain their large subsidies to the detriment of the developing countries, we must be adequately armed with these defense mechanisms to protect our rural sectors," Lorenzo said.

According to Lorenzo, the basic imbalance and inequality stems from the reluctance of developed countries to eliminate their trade-distorting subsidies that developing countries cannot afford, while forcing developing countries to further open their markets through the elimination of tariffs.

The proposal of the Philippines, Lorenzo said, is to have an automatic balancing mechanism that would slap subsidized imports with additional tariffs on top of the negotiated tariffs.

"If the developed countries remove their subsidies, then their exports to our markets would just be levied with regular tariffs," Lorenzo said.

Lorenzo said that in the special session of the WTO Committee on Agriculture in Geneva, the Philippines coordinated with Indonesia in presenting a Statement and Declaration articulating the position of developing countries on the need for safety nets that would protect their products from excessive imports under the WTO agreement.

Aside from the Philippines and Indonesia, the Statement and Declaration was signed by Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, India, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Turkey, Uganda, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

The Philippines and other developing countries have complained that their agriculture sectors, livelihood security, rural development and the full and unhampered competitiveness have been unduly prejudiced by the "unfairness" of the WTO agreement.

A total of 53,000 hectares of land has been distributed by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) for the first six months of the year, putting it on track to surpass the targeted 100,000 hectares pledged by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in her State of the Nation Address (SONA) .

Agrarian Reform Secretary Roberto Pagdanganan said that this is the first time that DAR has reached half of its distribution target in the first half of the year and with the trend in their land distribution, he is confident of going beyond the target.

Pagdanganan’s enthusiasm has been bolstered by the recent Supreme Court decision declaring Marcos money worth P38 billion as ill-gotten and therefore, as provided by law, must go to the agrarian reform program.

The President has announced that her administration is earmarking P8 billion of the P38 billion Marcos ill-gotten wealth for human rights victims and will hold the amount in escrow pending amendments in the agrarian reform law to allow for such use.

"Imagine what we can do for the farmers and even the former landowners with the resources?" Pagdanganan said. "The program must be able to give landowners just compensation so that they can also engage in farm enterprises."

In line with the President’s instructions, the DAR, according to Pagdanganan, will also treble the number of Agrarian Reform Communities (ARCs) and fast-track the provision of support services, such as farm-to-market roads, bridges, irrigation and post-harvest facilities and even electrification through solar energy.

On top of land distribution, DAR will also boost farm productivity through various support services, including marketing and product development.

Pagdanganan revealed that with a target of 101,321 hectares for distribution this year, 14 regions have actually accomplished already more than 50 percent of their target as of the first semester.

Topping the list is Region IX which already accomplished 16 percent of its target in land distribution. Second is Region I, with 78 percent and Region XII, with 71 percent.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), on the other hand, has distributed 67,000 hectares of land as of the end of June. The DAR and DENR are tasked to distribute 200,000 hectares for this year.

The Macapagal-Arroyo administration has achieved outstanding gains in its housing program by providing thousands of Filipinos with shelter security.

Secretary Michael Defensor, chairman of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC), announced this during the press briefing in Malacaņang, as part of the HUDCC accomplishment report for the year 2001 to 2003.

Since she assumed the presidency three years ago, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has proclaimed more government lands as housing sites, approved the highest amount as home loans to informal settlers, allocated the biggest funding for housing, and implemented lowest interest rates and efficient process in the granting of housing loans.

Defensor said the President signed 46 issuances as of June 2003, proclaiming a total of 22,600 hectares of unused government lands as potential sites for socialized housing.

These proclamations, Defensor said, secured the tenure of an estimated 202,702 families nationwide

According to Defensor, some 28,312 informal settlers have benefited from the record-setting P1.12 billion funds released by the National Home Mortgage Finance Corporation (NHMFC) in the two and a half years of Macapagal-Arroyo administration.

This excludes the issuance of letters of guarantee to pay the amount of loans applied for, totaling P597 million, upon completion of requirements. An additional 19,529 households are expected to benefit from this.

The said amount -- the highest under any administration for a similar period -- represents loans granted under the Community Mortgage Program (CMP) to finance the development of 209 urban poor settlements nationwide.

He noted that the housing for formal sector also got a big boost with the P30 billion committed by Pag-IBIG fund for its institutional and end-user financing programs.

Defensor added that since 2001 Pag-IBIG funded the construction or purchase of 131,894 housing units, exceeding by a margin of 3.7 percent its target of 127,165 housing units for the period.

He also said the Pag-IBIG made housing loans more accessible to low-income earner families by bringing down interest rates to their lowest levels. Interest rates now range from 6 percent to 12 percent per annum, depending on the loan amount – the lowest rates in the market to date.

The Pag-IBIG also reduced the number of required documents and the processing time for housing loan applications to seven working days for certain types of loans.

The National Housing Authority (NHA) has added to the list of housing beneficiaries some 62,861 families through its various projects under the socialized housing component of the shelter program since January 2001.

These projects include slum upgrading, sites and services, land tenurial assistance, community land acquisition support, grants-in-aid, cooperative housing, resettlement, emergency housing assistance, housing materials assistance and completed housing units.

The country’s labor force grew by 3.4 percent, reaching 33.93 million workers last year, according to the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE).

This was revealed by Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas today as she underscored her department’s mandate of curbing unemployment and fighting corruption in line with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s 2002 SONA commitments.

She said the employment rate grew by 3.1 per cent, with more than 906,000 persons employed during the same period.

For the year 2002, the full-year unemployment rate of 11.4 percent (3.874 million) was about the same as the 2001 rate of 11.2 percent, according to Sto. Tomas.

She said the average underemployment rate edged down to 17 percent (5.109 million) from 17.2 percent in 2001.

The strike incidence in year 2002 was also the lowest in 21 years, according to her, with only 36 strikes reported nationwide.

Sto. Tomas said that DOLE’s top priority strategies entail employment promotion and facilitating job search.

Sto. Tomas likewise noted that the unemployment rate also decreased to 12.2 percent in April this year compared to the same period last year.

She added that the number of unemployed persons had decreased by 649,000 while the underemployment rate also drop by 4.0 percent as compared to 19.6 percent in April 2002 to 15.6 percent this year.

Sto. Tomas said DOLE will continue to intensify campaign against the two perennial problems of unemployment and corruption.

The labor chief noted that for the first semester of 2003, DOLE forged 24 bilateral agreements with other foreign governments to promote the welfare and enhance the protection of OFWs in host countries.

On its pledge to create and improve job opportunities, DOLE’s Kabuhayan 2003 Action Center assisted 57,459 job seekers, including youth, workers in the informal sector and overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).

The DOLE, she added, has listed under the Computerized National Manpower Registry of Skills (CNMRS) a total of 944,744 skills. This database provides readily available and useful information on Filipino workers’ skills and competencies for easier job-matching and referral system.

It has also facilitated the deployment of OFWs which totaled 461,041 in the first six months of the year or a daily average of 2,547 and implemented streamlined procedures on the deployment of Filipino overseas.

The Labor Department also spearheaded the operation of the Philippine Seafarer’s One-Stop Center (PSOC) which accelerates the verification of the qualifications of Filipino seafarers by manning agencies and international seafaring vessels anywhere and anytime.

Sto. Tomas stressed that it has established 13 POEA satellite offices to bring the government services closer to potential OFWs, as well as reduce opportunities for illegal recruitment.

She said the death benefit for both land-based and sea-based OFWs who died of natural causes was increased by 42.9 percent while of those accidents, by 66.7 percent.

For the DOLE’s anti-corruption drive, she reported that a total of 434 illegal recruitment cases were filed in court out of the 788 cases handled while 12 suspected illegal recruiters were arrested and 20 establishments closed and padlocked due to illegal recruitment activities.

She reiterated that they have instituted reforms in the labor adjudication process through the issuance of DO No. 40-03 (amending the implementing rules of Book V of the Labor Code of the Philippines) which established uniform and simplified adjudication processes for resolving labor disputes.

The DOLE has also provided employment assistance to over 60,000 youths under the 2003 Summer Youth Employment Program. And has enrolled 2,159 informal sector workers under the Social Protection Scheme for Workers in the Informal Sector.

Mindanao leaders today expressed their full support to the government’s peace initiatives with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), saying that they all want peace to prevail so that Mindanao can finally catch up with the rest of the country in economic growth.

In a meeting this afternoon in Malacaņang with the Mindanao leaders, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said the MILF has not done any offensive move since the signing of a cessation of hostilities accord between the government and the MILF.

"So I think that we have a very good chance of success at this particular moment," the President said.

The President said that if there are no terrorist attacks or atrocities, the military could go to normal deployment even as she vowed that the safety and security of our communities remain to be the highest consideration and would not be compromised.

"While we want peace, we also want to defeat terror and I want to clarify this to everybody," the President said.

The President then called on those present to extend their support to the peace panel that would be leaving soon for Kuala Lumpur for the resumption of the peace talks with the MILF.

"I ask you to have confidence in them. I believe we are on the verge of a major breakthrough to be able to deliver peace with security and development," the President said.

In an earlier statement, the President said the government will work with the MILF in forging "one final peace agreement that would silence the guns and seal a common future" with them under the Constitution.

Present during the meeting were Executive Secretary Alberto Romulo, Presidential Management Staff head Secretary Silvestre Afable, Jr., Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes, Presidential Adviser on Strategic Concerns Renato de Villa, Social Welfare and Development Secretary Corazon Juliano-Soliman, Agriculture Secretary Luis Lorenzo, Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Eduardo Ermita, Presidential Spokesman Ignacio Bunye, Presidential Chief of Staff Rigoberto Tiglao, Armed Forces Chief, Gen. Narciso Abaya, Senators Loren Legarda, Ramon Magsaysay Jr., and Aquilino Pimentel, Jr.. and Archbishops Orlando Quevedo and Fernando Capalla.