News

LFS slams $434-M US grant to RP

“The new $434-M compact grant given to the Philippines by the US government-sponsored Millennium Change Corporation is nothing but a carrot stick to further Washington’s greater inroads into the Philippine economy under President Aquino.” This was the statement of Terry Ridon, national chairperson of the League of Filipino Students in reaction to the elation of the Aquino government over the receipt of such funding, supposedly for the building of roads and other social services.

He said that such grants are no different from the infamous ‘structural adjustment programs’ of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that compelled developing nations like the Philippines to drastically remove pro-people economic policies in exchange for development aid.

He feared that the Aquino government would view this new grant as an incentive to further open the economy for US interests and capital without regard to the public’s concern over plunder of natural resources and national patrimony.

He said that Pres. Aquino’s general economic plan towards public-private partnerships is clearly in line with the demands of the US government to allow heightened US investments in the country as among the requirements for inclusion in the MCC.

Ridon said that instead of relying on foreign loans with unjust conditionalities to supposedly develop the nation, the Aquino government commit to the immediate distribution of agricultural land to the country’s landless and poor farmers, as in Hacienda Luisita.

In recent years, the passage of the 12% Value Added Tax is among the many examples where international funding institutions required the Philippines to change its laws in order for the latter to continue availing foreign loans and grants.


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10th August 2010 | Filed under: News | Click here to follow any responses to this entry: RSS 2.0 feed

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