‘Going abroad as choice rather than necessity’

On behalf of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO), the government agency I head under the Office of the President, I thank the Inquirer for its Dec. 23, 2014, editorial titled “Growing OFW savings.”

Indeed, the number of overseas Filipinos (OFs) and their families who save and invest their hard-earned incomes from working and living abroad has seen an increase in recent years, and this is a trend that we would like to see more of through policies, programs and multistakeholder initiatives until it becomes an irreversible mindset acquired and nurtured by OFs and their families.

The Aquino administration’s Philippine Development Plan 2011-2016, recognizing the potential contribution of remittance to development, states that “the government can ensure that the policy environment is conducive to the use of remittances for investment in well-considered financial products, in productive activities such as entrepreneurial undertakings as well as in better housing, education and healthcare for remitters and their beneficiaries. Improving the financial education of the overseas Filipino community and implementing measures to further promote the flow of remittances through the financial system would help catalyze the developmental role of remittances.”

The Joint Migration and Development Initiative Phase 2 (JMDI2) has its initial implementation in three regions in the country: the Bicol region, Calabarzon and the JMDI2-related initiative in Western Visayas. It aims to engage subnational and local authorities in mainstreaming migration in their development plans and investment programs, in building the capacities of local authorities to link migration to development, in providing a wide range of social and economic services to migrants and their families left behind, while at the same time channeling their resources for local development and in strengthening their financial education and enterprise capability. We hope to replicate this initiative in the Ilocos region and also in Mindanao through other projects supported by local and international partners.

Through JMDI2 and other migration-related and development (M&D) initiatives by the national and local governments, CFO, along with the United Nations Development Program, the European Union, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, and other partners, hopes to build a better future back home for our 10.5 million overseas Filipinos, their families and their communities.

This is to concretize President Aquino’s policy statement on international migration in his 16-point Social Contract with the Filipino People with his commitment toward transformational leadership: “From a government that treats its people as an export commodity and a means to earn foreign exchange, disregarding the social cost to Filipino families to… a government that creates jobs at home so that working abroad will be a choice rather than a necessity, and when its citizens do choose to become overseas Filipino workers, their welfare and protection will still be the government’s priority.”

—IMELDA M. NICOLAS,

secretary, Commission on Filipinos Overseas,

Office of the President, [email protected]