PGMA's Speech during the Students' Forum at the Sacrad Heart College in Lucena City

Sacred Heart College Cultural Cenber and Gymnasium Lucena City, Quezon (27 Nov. 2003)
Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Sister President Custodio for your very kind welcome.

I would just like to introduce to the faculty and the students the other guests who came here with me today. We have from your district Congresswoman Lynnette Punzalan; from the district north of the province of Quezon, Congressman Raffy Nantes; from my Cabinet, Secretary Joey Lina of the DILG; Secretary Cito Lorenzo of Agriculture; Undersecretary of Housing, Undersecretary De Castro.

I would like to greet the members of the student executive council headed by President Mary Grace Inhente. Thank you for your kind welcome. I would also like to greet all the faculty members and students of the Sacred Heart College, and the community of the Daughters of Charity.

Sister Custodio said that this is the second time I visit your community, because the first time was when I was a vice president. I was also accompanied by Congressman Punzalan, the late husband of Congresswoman Punzalan, and it was in the Hermana Fausta Development Center. It was on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Hermana Fausta. And the reason why I took the trouble of driving to Lucena to attend the silver anniversary of a school with a relatively small population is that the Hermana Fausta Development Center... Oops! I'm sorry, I thought he was a congressman from Quezon also, Secretary of Agrarian Reform, Secretary Obet Pagdanganan.

I would like to let you know also that Secretary Obet Pagdanganan is a son-in-law of Sariaya. His wife Susan is from Sariaya and when I used to attend the Tayabas Association balls in the five-star hotels in Manila, Secretary Pagdanganan being a son-in-law of Quezon, was always there as one of the main rigodon dancers looking so handsome in his black tie tuxedo.

Anyway, I was telling you about Hermana Fausta and why I went to that school even if it's not a very big school, even if not many people from Manila know about it because I have a very sentimental connection to that school. My mother, the late Evangelina Macaraeg-Macapagal studied in Hermana Fausta Development Center. This was during the time of still the American colonial period and my grandfather Juan Macaraeg was a U.sS.-educated engineer. And he was assigned by the U.S. government to be an engineer here in the province of Tayabas that's why his daughter studied in Hermana Fausta. And Hermana Fausta is a person that we are all very proud of and I hope that one day she would be beatified and canonized as an honor for all of us, all of you who have benefited from the education that she pioneered.

My mother is no longer with us. She wasn't with us anymore when I went to visit the Hermana Fausta Development Center, she had passed away. But I am very happy to be with you this afternoon because as Ssister Sustodio said you often find me where angels fear to tread. But this is a gathering where angels love to be with, the young minds, the young people of our country. Because I oftentimes have to be in places where angels fear to tread. It is not always that I have a chance to be in the company of young minds even when you are always on my mind, the young people.

I cannot help but always think of the young people because what we are doing today is not only for our benefit today, more than that, it is for your benefit when you are already living outside in our world. And I have come to think of the young people even more on a personal basis since I became a grandmother. I think of the young people as personified by my own granddaughter Mikaela. And also I think of the young people I realized that more than half of our population are made up of young people. That's why I'm here -- I need to hear from you; I need to listen to what you have to say; i need to see your faces as you react to what I say. You the young are made up of energy. You pump energy into the national life.

It's a good thing that we are meeting on this special day. This day is special for two reasons: one, for all of us with a Catholic education, it is the feast of the Miraculous Medal. It is a day that we remember that Mama Mary, the mother of us all, is there to intercede for us when we ask for her help because her son Jesus Christ can hardly say no to her. That's why Mama Mary can make miracles. Mama Mary was the patron saint of the miracle of Edsa one. She was also the patron saint of the miracle of Edsa two.

Today is also the birth anniversary, 71 years old, of Ninoy Aquino, our latest national hero. Latest national hero because it was in my administration that we did the executive order and the law proclaiming him a national hero. That's why I'm wearing yellow today because i started my day hearing mass at his gravesite.

Ninoy Aquino when he first decided to enter national public life, when he first decided to run for senator, did a survey of what people thought of him. Not many knew him because his exposure was only in the province of Tarlac. He had gone of course to Korea as a war correspondent but coming back to the country just governor of Tarlac. So, when you're a governor of a province, two provinces away from Manila -- like Quezon is two provinces away from manila -- you're not necessarily known in the capital especially in those days there was no big television like what we have today. But the few who knew him knew him for his youth. Because at the age of seventeen he was a war correspondent in Korea, when many seventeen year olds are not still concerned about national life but only concerned about their own little world around them.

And I am glad that you have given me a chance, the president of the Philippines, to come here and talk to you because you know I will not talk about your little weekend parties. You know I will not talk about your latest popular shows on TV or the most popular shop here in Lucena. You know I will talk about national life. But you are such an important part of national life because you are what we are fixing our national life all about. Therefore because you are such an important part of national life -- what's that? Tuko? 'Di ba that's Tuko? I used to have that very often also in my house in La Vista, because my house in la vista has a hill behind me so the back part is quite rural. So the Tuko comes and makes that noise all the time.

Well, anyway, because you're an important part of national life, let me begin -- although Sister Custodio told me about the many bad news you often hear about -- let me begin by sharing with you some good news about our national life. Just today, the new figures for the growth of our national production were released, and I am very happy that production within our country in the third quarter of this year grew by 4.4 percent -- that's called GDP. Production by Filipinos including the contributions of our overseas Filipinos grew by 5.9 percent.

That's good news for one thing because it's our highest growth since the Asian crisis of 1997. Now many of you were very young in 1997. If you're seventeen years old, first year, or sixteen years old, you were only ten years old in 1997. You were probably not aware of the great difficulty that your parents began to undergo that time. If you're twenty-one and about to graduate from college, you were fifteen years old in 1997. And you were probably more concerned the first party you would attend, the first date. If you're a fifteen year-old girl, would you be a wallflower in your next dance. But your parents began to experience great difficulty.

Nonetheless, though at that time the whole Asian economy collapsed, your parents still sacrificed to put you in a private catholic school so you have to thank them because they put you in a school where they have to pay private tuition fees even at a cost of great sacrifice.

Now, the region is beginning to recover, and that's one reason why our 5.9 percent growth rate is there. But there's a second reason to be happy about that figure, because even when people hear complaint, talk about bad news, we have to understand that the Asian crisis was not only in the Philippines, it was in the whole Asia. But as our countries around us are beginning to recover, I am happy to say that the figures I announced today, 5.9 percent GNP, are higher than we expected. And we outperformed Taiwan, Indonesia, Singapore and Korea.

We should be proud of this miracle announced on the day of the miraculous medal because, historically, our growth rate has been slow compared to these other economies. That's why I thank god that during the two and a half years of my administration, despite the difficulties in the world -- terrorism, Asian crisis, SARS -- despite those who keep criticizing me, despite the disturbances mentioned by Sister Custodio, our economy has been growing at a rate that is number six among the 21 economies of the Asia-Pacific region.

Why did our economy grow so much in the last quarter more than so many other economies around us? Where did this growth come from? They came from two sources: one is agriculture and the other is investment spending. What is the meaning of this for you young people? Well, as far as investments are concerned, the figures today are consistent with figures I announced yesterday coming from the Department of Trade and Industry. Yesterday, the DTI said that the firms registering with the Board of Investments and the economic zones grew by 22 percent over last year. Agriculture and investments, what does this mean for you? Quezon is an agricultural province. It's one of the largest agricultural provinces in the world. It's number two in coconut production. Used to be number one but now Davao oriental is number one. So, when we say that the growth in agriculture is the source of this very rapid growth we had in the third quarter, I can only hope that the farmers of Quezon are benefiting from the big increase in agricultural production.

I just met with the farmers of Quezon earlier, particularly the farmers of district one and district two. Exactly the farmers of Congressman Nantes and Congresswoman Punzalan that's why they're here with me this afternoon as well.

And I was so happy to hear about the farmers' report because it was a Farmers' Congress. I was happy that they themselves decided that they will set aside -- how much? 40 pesos per month -- each farmer will set aside 40 pesos a month so they can put together savings. And in the end, because they are so many, they'll be able to put up millions of pesos together to put up important processing plants and other facilities to make them more productive. That is the kind of farmer that has been contributing to our rapid growth rate and we shall be proud of the farmers of Quezon province.

The other source of growth is investment spending. When you say investment spending that means you'll put up a factory, you'll put up a call center. And investment spending today means more production in the future cause it takes about three years to put up a factory, maybe six months to put up a call center. And I hope that those who are investing today, I hope will be able to provide jobs for you, the young people, by the time you graduate. That's why it's so important to have investment spending today.

Why were there's a lot of farmers' production? Why was there a lot of investment spending? I have to talk to you about some of the things we did in our government policy to keep our growth on an upward path. One of the things that we did is what we call macroeconomic fundamentals and the other one is sustained agricultural modernization. Let me try to explain to you what we mean by macroeconomic fundamentals. They refer to the things that are needed for investment -- how we manage our budget; how we manage prices; how we manage interest rates. You see governments usually spend more money than they tax, because we have the power to borrow. We can borrow the balance because we borrow to produce roads and things that will benefit people later on. And when the people benefit later on that's when we pay back what we borrowed in this generation.

So investments are supposed to provide the later production that can pay for borrowing. But you can only borrow so much. You had to control the deficit -- that's called fiscal prudence. And we did fiscal prudence. We kept the budget deficit within reasonable ceilings. That's what we've been able to do. Because if government borrows too much, it will compete with the private sector. The interest rate will go up, investments will go down. But if the government keeps down its borrowings then the private sector can be the one to borrow because interest rate will go down, and they have gone down in my administration. That's why investments came to the Philippines. That what's happening now.

Now, what about prices? How do we manage prices? I hope that the poor families of Quezon -- that not you but the poorer ones -- are able to feel that the price of basic necessities bought by the poor has remained stable during my two and a half years of my administration. The ordinary rice not the fancy rice. Never mind if the fancy rice goes up but the ordinary rice must remain stable. The fish especially tilapia has remained stable. And the medicines commonly bought by the poor have also remained stable. Then also why can we keep the price of rice down? Why can keep the price of tilapia down? Because of agricultural modernization. Because if you have agricultural modernization you have greater productivity. We've been able to keep food for the poor stable in supply and price because of what my administration has done to modernize agriculture. We spend at least 20 billion pesos a year for agricultural modernization. Never has any administration spent this amount of money for agricultural modernization before.

Where did we spend this money? A large part of it went to the development and propagation of a new rice hybrid that doubles farmers' harvest. So when you have plenty of rice, it becomes cheaper. But to have rice like that you need irrigation, and we have also spent the biggest irrigation program in history. All these while keeping the budget deficit down.

Why? Because my main vision is this "pagkain sa bawat mesa." this has been the battle cry closest to my heart since I was a senator. It is the essence of our fight against poverty. Mga kabataan ng Quezon, ng Lucena, mga nag-aaral sa napakamagandang eskwelahan, Sacred Heart College, you have a very big responsibility to play. Naghihirap 'yung magulang ninyo nung pumasok kayo sa college, Asian crisis, but you are here, Catholic private schools are among the best schools anywhere in the country, they give you the best education.

I had told you some of the things that I do in a simple term as possible to let you know that even that the headlines are about Oakwood or whatever it is, or Magdalo, or Makati rally, Ayala avenue, I spend my time on these things -- irrigation, hybrid rice, budget deficit -- and the results come out, greater production for your future. But when you get out of school, many will be poor, many will be uneducated. But you will be educated, you will have the first crack at the good jobs, you will have the leadership in our society. I hope on this day when we remember the great man Ninoy Aquino and when we remember how Mama Mary makes miracles for our country, you the youth of today will use those miracles to make tomorrow a better place for the rest of Quezon and the Philippines to live in.

Thank you very much for listening to me this afternoon.

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