Pact to be signed in economic summit today

President Arroyo will sign the "Socio-Economic Pact of 2001" during the National Socio-Economic Summit at the Manila Hotel today.

Malacañang Spokesman Rigoberto Tiglao said the government will unveil at the summit a set of short-term economic programs to help the country deal with the global slowdown brought about by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

"But what’s important here is that very concrete proposals would be made instead of just having motherhood statements," he said.

Tiglao said the programs were drawn up based on pre-summit proposals and consultations with summit participants, including members of Congress, and representatives from non-government organizations, the religious, the youth, labor groups, the so-called "civil society," and the business sector.

The summit will focus on 12 economic concerns:

• Financial and fiscal policies;
• Agriculture and rural development;
• International trade and export industry;
• Airlines, shipping, hotels and other tourism-related industries;
• Information and communications technology;
• Education;
• Health and other social services;
• Peace and order and security; and
• Governance.

Also to be discussed in today’s summit are measures to increase the tax collections of the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Bureau of Customs.

On the other hand, militant groups warned yesterday that today’s National Socio-Economic Summit would be used by the Employers Confederation of the Philippines to freeze wages and invalidate existing labor standards.

Between January and August this year, 6,000 firms were found to have violated the minimum wage law based on statistics from the labor department, the Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP) said in a statement yesterday.

"The summit must heed the clamor for the protection of the workers and the poor," read the BMP statement. "If not then the additional objective of President Arroyo’s socio-economic summit is merely to create an illusion of consultation in order to secure support for her beleaguered presidency and to her bid for the 2004 presidential elections."

Rodolfo Sambajon, national chairman of Pamalakaya, said they will not attend the summit even as Mrs. Arroyo banned the participation of militant organizations.

"There’s no need for the President to declare the ban because in the first place we don’t have any inclination of attending such a super bogus affair," he said.

In the preamble of the Socio-Economic Pact of 2001, "politicking and media sensationalism" should be put on hold as proposed by industrialist Raul Concepcion.

The call of Concepcion was supported by the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) through the Philippine Business Conference which it held recently.

The PCCI warned that "media sensationalism" is detrimental to Philippine economic development because it contributes to the country’s negative image abroad.

Concepcion was the first to propose a moratorium on politicking and media sensationalism, saying that the Arroyo administration must "analyze a modified version of (the country’s) free-wheeling democracy." –Paolo Romero, Sandy Araneta, Marianne Go