Indeed, nothing is
more contagious than enthusiasm. The President’s enthusiasm has caught
on with the region’s development planners and has inspired the local
government executives. At last, the Regions will be able to really
complement each other so that development will no longer be centered
in just one specific region but in all the Regions. The regions will
no longer think as an individual region but in relation to the other
regions belonging to their mega region.
Even the media
practitioners from the Region who went to
Cebu to cover the
joint Cabinet-RDCs meeting came home talking and writing about the
supra regions as a new concept in development planning. By the way
they have been discussing the topic the past two days means that they
too are happy and amenable with the way things are intended to be
done.
Fresh from her meeting
with the Central Philippines and the Mindanao local officials and
development councils last week-end, President Arroyo is again set to
have a simultaneous meeting, this time with the three supra regions
of North Luzon, Central Philippines and Mindanao Region, for a second
round discussions of development planning.
The simultaneous
meeting is intended to fast-track the discussion on the proposed
revisions to the Medium Term Public Investment Programs which aims to
raise additional funds for infrastructure, education, health and other
social projects in the next five years.
President Arroyo
unveiled the plan to develop North Luzon Region as an Agribusiness
Quadrangle, saying that “the strength of Northern Luzon is
agribusiness...the strongest way to fight poverty the area is to
concentrate on agribusiness investments in this area." For Metro
Luzon, the President encouraged greater logistics investment in Clark
and Subic Economic Zones; investments in expressways and ports in the
urban beltway as well as Aurora; and agribusiness investments in Nueva
Ecija, the country's number one rice-producing province. She also
batted for investments that will make the island provinces of Mindoro
and Marinduque benefit from the development of Calabarzon.
The President
envisions Central Philippines as the country’s Tourism Center and the
Center of a New Green Philippines. The Mindanao Region will become the
Agribusiness Center in the South.
