|
DAVAO
CITY—The administration must focus on macroeconomic
plans to lift the country out of crisis after crisis,
former President Fidel Ramos said here at the
relaunching of a program for Mindanao that saw the birth
of one of the global models of a subregional economic
cooperation—the Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines-East Asean Growth Area (BIMP-Eaga).
“To
those leaders up there, they must focus their attention
to macro plans to bring us out of these difficulties,”
said Ramos after he launched Mindanao 2020, a sequel to
Mindanao 2000 that sought to make this big Philippine
island the southern gateway to the world.
Citing
the rice crisis, Ramos said the administration should
“continue modernizing agriculture, especially using
water assets like irrigation. This is what Vietnam was
doing when it tapped its two river systems, the Mekong
River and the Red River,” and terraced its mountains “to
create more hectarage for cultivation.”
Its
government also provided a subsidy of one ton or 1,000
kilos per family per year to farmers who could create an
additional one hectare for rice farming.
“Aside
from promoting environmental protection, Vietnam added
one million hectares in the last five years,” said
Ramos. “We stopped, however, after the Ifugao rice
terraces. That’s why, while we and the rest of the world
have been suffering from the rice crisis, Vietnam is
smiling because we are all buying rice at a high
price.”
“This is
one area we can do something about right away. And we
don’t even have to go to Congress because we already
have the Afma [Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization
Act].”
He said
these macroeconomic plans would also aptly apply to
implementing Mindanao 2020, a plan to strengthen the
gains of Mindanao and Palawan as links to the BIMP-Eaga.
He said
strengthening the economic fundamentals for the island
would help shield Mindanao and Palawan, including the
entire BIMP-Eaga, from a repeat of the July 1997 Asian
financial crisis that ravaged most Asian economies. |
