Brgy. Baccuit, Bauang, La Union, May 27, 2008
Thank you Ray for your introduction.
Chairman Manny Pangilinan and President Polly Nazareno and all the officials of PLDT and all their partners, Congratulations!; Governor Ortega, Congressman Ortega, Congressman Dumpit and the other officials of La Union, Congratulations! on the location of this important gateway here in your province.
I’d like to greet also Congresswoman Luna from Abra and Congressman Joseph Santiago, the chairman of the ICT Committee in the House of Representatives; Cabinet members; Ladies and Gentlemen.
Congratulations! first of all to PLDT on your 80th Anniversary, 80 years of service to the Filipino people.
So this year is an auspicious moment to launch the Asian-American Gateway. As we have heard from the other speakers, your company’s second International Cable Landing Station.
The first gateway facility of PLDT in Batangas was a watershed in the development of the country’s telecoms infrastructure. But today it is exceeded by this new landing station, which as we have heard from the speakers earlier, links our country through over 20,000 kilometers of submarine fiber optic cable to our neighbors in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong as well as our Pacific partners, Hawaii and the continental U.S.
We thank PLDT and its partners for this over half a billion dollar cable system. And may I mention the list of partners they gave me: AT & T of the U.S., Bharti of India, CAT of Thailand, StarHub of Singapore, PT Telkom of Indonesia, Telstra of Australia, TM of Malaysia, VNPT of Vietnam, and the Government of Brunei. What a great international partnership!
And this award winning system will support, as we have heard, the rapidly growing telecommunications traffic between our country and the rest of the region as well as the U.S. It will provide us with a resiliency and redundancy of service that is not easily disrupted by natural disasters like the Taiwan earthquake of December 2006. I remember that earthquake, it was a very, very short disruption but our BPOs especially our call centers cannot even afford a few minutes of disruption. So they demanded for redundancy if our industry was to continue growing and I’m happy that PLDT has provided this redundancy. Thank you.
Now, the BPO and all the other IT companies can breathe easier.
This is what I was referring to in my last State of the Nation when I said and I quote: “So that no Taiwan tremor can cut off our cyber services from their global clients, PLDT and Globe are investing 47 billion pesos in new international broadband links through other regional hubs.” And here it is. Congratulations!
The AAG International Cable System and Landing Station represent a big boost, as we have said, as Ray have said, to the continued growth of our ICT industries, especially offshoring and outsourcing which depend on reliable international broadband services.
Spending on transport, digital and human infrastructure remains central to the ability of our nation to break the historic cycle of despair and to meet the challenges of the future, and the future has landed. And we will continue to invest heavily in new spending. We thank PLDT and its partners for sparing the government the need to be the one to build this gateway.
When the private sector puts up an important infrastructure such as this gateway, it spares the government to be the one to put it up, we are better able to balance the budget which remains a very important priority. We have always said that a balanced budget was our goal by the time we leave office. That remains our target. We are well on our way to meeting that goal, thanks to private infrastructure investors like PLDT. Our surplus in April when PLDT paid its income tax more than doubled year-on-year due to higher tax collection. Our cumulative budget deficit from January to April fell to P25.8 billion. I’m confident we will be able to sustain progress on the budget front.
Thanks to private infrastructure spending like this international gateway, for the first time in a generation, our budget is under control; we are lowering our deficits and raising unprecedented amounts of revenue. Again, thanks to big taxpayers like PLDT. We do not want to and will not go back to the days of heavy deficit spending. Our commitment to economic reform has proven effective. We’re both comfortable and confident that our discipline will allow us to continue on a balanced path of targeted investment and overall restraint. Balancing the budget as I said remains a very important priority that will not be abandoned. But we will do this while investing in much-needed infrastructure and social services.
With firms like PLDT taking on a large part of the burden of building vital infrastructure, there is no need for new taxes. We have plenty of room to increase revenues by enhancing tax administration. And tax administration can be enhanced because we have better internet services. This continues to be one of our main focus areas this year. That is also how we will address the short-term challenges we face in meeting our revenue-generating targets.
Rating agencies like Moody’s which investors listen to, which raised our credit rating outlook to positive recently, have recognized our fiscal progress. We are determined to show that we are a government that delivers on its commitment, and one of our most important commitments is to have a friendly environment for business. We are confident that the Filipino people themselves, the masses, the ordinary citizens will acknowledge the sustainability of our reforms in the long-term.
Our Medium-Term Plan for the government and the private sector to invest in social and physical infrastructure includes billions of pesos in education, healthcare and training along with billions in new bridges, roads, ports and digital infrastructure to upgrade the competitiveness of the Philippines. This will in turn attract more investment and create more jobs, which at the end of the day is our goal to improve the lives of our people.
We thank PLDT for this redundancy because as I said when the tremor from Taiwan hit everybody said, you need redundancy. Now, the industry tells me, ‘coz I told them, well, the PLDT is putting it up in Northern Luzon. They said, but now that the cybercorridor is all over the country, maybe we should have another redundancy in Southern Philippines. And I’m very glad that very readily the way Manny answered me the first time, when I said Manny we need a redundancy because of what happened in Taiwan. And Manny said we’ve already started working on it. Today, I said, Manny the BPO industry are asking for a redundancy in the South, and Manny said we are already working on it.
Thank you very much, Manny. Thank you PLDT. Thank you for giving us our future. (OPS)
