Sona 2026: What Filipinos need to hear (2)

Sona 2026: What Filipinos need to hear (2) Given the country’s economic challenges, the most important part of the State of the Nation Address (Sona) should be a clear outline of the Marcos administration’s policy direction in its final two years. Our recommended executive and legislative actions include: Investing further in agriculture and industry to diversify growth sources. Supporting the agricultural sector is important in managing food inflation, addressing hunger and malnutrition, and raising the income of farmers and rural families. We should develop supply chain infrastructure like common warehouses, cold-storage facilities, and farm-to-market roads to minimize postharvest losses; provide support through crop insurance, research and development; and pass the revised warehouse receipts bill to improve access to credit and modernize postharvest management systems. Developing the local manufacturing sector, including micro, small, and medium enterprises, can generate quality, high-paying jobs and expand export production. Local processing and refining of raw materials such as critical minerals and agricultural products must be developed to enable our country to earn more from our natural and mineral resources. The government, businesses, and universities should continue to collaborate with each other to improve the existing skills of workers and teach them new ones. This will enable them to qualify for changing and better paying jobs. Rebuilding trust. Accountability matters. High-ranking public officials implicated and proven guilty in the flood control scandal should return the money they stole and must be put to jail. Amendments to the bank secrecy law must be passed to allow authorized government agencies to review bank records of public officials suspected of being involved in corruption, money laundering, and other illegal activities. • Genuine civil society participation. Civil society groups should be involved in reviewing budget proposals from government agencies and in monitoring the execution of programs and projects nationwide. • Enhancing transparency in budget deliberations. Committee hearings, including the bicameral conference committee, should continuously be open through live streaming. All proposed individual amendments to the budget must be documented and discussed in public, not during closed-door sessions. Budget documents must be widely accessible to the public on time. • Exercising veto powers of the President. In case Congress inserts anomalous items in the national budget, the President should vigorously use his line-item veto power to remove them. • Active executive and legislative oversight. The President must put more emphasis on provincial visits to personally check the progress of major government projects. Addressing the ease of doing business. More resources should be allocated to the Anti-Red Tape Authority to empower them in enforcing the Ease of Doing Business law, particularly in reducing unnecessary requirements and complicated procedures, especially at the local level. There should be an aggressive campaign toward digitalization of government processes to shorten processing time, reduce face-to-face transactions, and lessen the incidence of corruption. Lowering the cost of doing business, like high power rates and logistics costs to attract investments. We should accelerate implementation of key infrastructure projects to ease transport of goods and people, alongside streamlining development of power plants and transmission lines. Strengthening partnership with the private sector. Bottlenecks in public-private partnerships such as right of way acquisition and delays in issuance of local permits must be addressed and resolved. Scaling up investment in early childhood care. Considerable resources must be allotted for health, nutrition and education programs covering the first 2,000 days of a child’s life from pregnancy to about 5 years old, if the Philippines wants to take advantage of its large young population that could become a productive workforce in the future if properly nourished, healthy, and educated. These include vaccination, expansion of daycare centers, supplementary feeding, and nutrient programs in schools and communities. Conclusion. Overall, the past 12 months have been very difficult for the Philippines. Most of our country’s problems whose solutions are within our control are due largely to misaligned policy decisions and ineffective implementation. Accordingly, in these challenging times, the government must step up, take the lead, and face the problems head on. For its final two years, the Marcos administration, with the active support of the private sector, should focus on and intensify its efforts in addressing the most urgent concerns of Filipinos and bringing the economy back on track. This would ensure that the upper-middle-income status of the Philippines will be more meaningful for and felt by our countrymen. —————– Gary B. Teves is a Filipino politician and public servant who served as secretary of the Department of Finance.