The President must seize the moment

The President should let the political brickbats flow like water on a duck’s back and spend his time more on the other presidential duties by coordinating the executive branches of government to cope with the recurring natural disasters that beg for long-term solutions and be at the center of it. He should lay aside responding to the political innuendos.

If I were in his shoes, I would put my time and effort into the important economic issues besetting the country, first and foremost. I will activate the Development and Budget Coordinating Council (DBCC), which the President heads, to move the economy forward with the right policies and enabling legislations. The DBCC comprises the core economic managers, the Department of Finance secretary, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas governor, the National Economic and Development Authority chair, and the Department of Budget and Management secretary.

They should be able to make the blueprint for the short-term, medium-term, and long-term plans to move our economy forward.

According to international analysts, we are on the threshold of becoming one of the fastest-growing gross domestic product in the Asia and Pacific region in the years ahead. Challenging us is the oversized 2025 NEP budget of P6.3 trillion, about P1.5 trillion beyond the country’s revenue expectations. We must learn from the ongoing investigation in the Lower House on the hard-earned tax revenues from the sweat and blood of dutiful taxpayers are wantonly wasted, such as those flagged by Commission on Audit in the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education, where more than P600 million were paid to fictitious atnd nonexistent recipients. A reprehensible insult and a betrayal of trust to those who voted for them. There could be other offices that are guilty of the same.

The President should seize the moment. He would be better off spending his remaining term of office concentrating on solving the basic economic problems that we have: uncontrolled inflation, unstable food supply, underperforming agriculture, slow economic development, gross unemployment, etc. These are some of the baseline economic problems calling for solutions. Once the economy grows and people have jobs, the political circus will find a natural end and just fade away.

MARVEL K. TAN, CPA,

captbeloytan@gmail.com