MANILA — Team Unity senatorial bets are all excited at seeing more government workers availing themselves of cheap loans under President Arroyo’s micro-lending program, as they vowed to push in the next Congress a package of “social payback” benefits meant to augment their incomes.
“We all welcome the P1 billion in micro-finance loans that Government has set aside for workers, because this is one opportunity for them to try their hands and entrepreneurial skills in the world of business,” Team Unity senatorial candidate Vic Magsaysay said, adding that such opportunity would augment their incomes.
On the occasion of Labor Day, Magsaysay said President Arroyo’s micro-finance program, part of her Social Payback Program, aims to give collateral-free loans to poor individuals with a penchant to do business and to micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), which now make up about 90% of the country’s list of business establishments.
“Lending to government workers under President Arroyo’s micro-finance program is providing a break to State workers who, in one way or another, have been exposed to the goings-on in the business world,” Magsaysay said, adding that government workers had more or less accumulated the business acumen of entrepreneurs they were in constant touch with and that such break “might prove very useful to the business community.”
“Team Unity’s legislative agenda seeks to provide people from all walks of life the necessary access to credit facilities, a goal also spelled out under President Arroyo’s Social Payback Program,” Magsaysay explained.
Through Small Business Corp., the government has made available a total of P34 billion in loans to poor individuals, micro-, small- and medium-scale businesses. The SB Corp. is a recipient of loans under the micro-finance programs of lending institutions such as Asian Development Bank, Germany’s KFW Bankegruppe and United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development. SB Corp. in turn relend these loans to MSMEs or guarantee the loans they seek from banks.
Magsaysay said “providing credit access to the poor, to the workers in public and private entities, or even to the farmers to enable them to do their own business is critical to pushing the country’s entrepreneurial development, as it means honing their business and entrepreneurial skills and preparing them to become competitive in the dog-eat-dog world of business.”
Magsaysay added that Team Unity has recognized that micro-sized businesses with 10 or less employees, small-sized enterprises with 100 or less employees and medium-sized businesses as the cog in the bigger business development machine, which will ultimately provide job opportunities to countrymen.
Magsaysay said “providing credit access to the poor, to the workers in public and private entities, or even to the farmers to enable them to do their own business is critical to pushing the country’s entrepreneurial development, as it means honing their business and entrepreneurial skills and preparing them to become competitive in the dog-eat-dog world of business.”
Magsaysay added that Team Unity has recognized that micro-sized businesses with 10 or less employees, small-sized enterprises with 100 or less employees and medium-sized businesses as the cog in the bigger business development machine, which will ultimately provide job opportunities to countrymen.
Magsaysay also warned voters that if Congress ? or even the Senate, for that matter ? would fall in the hands of the opposition, everything about micro-finance would possibly change for the worse. “The lowdown is that the poor and government workers won’t even have a taste of how it is to do business and how to compete with business rivals. That will mean the death of entrepreneurship without even trying,” he added.
“That is why the people are now raring for a Congress that will work with President Arroyo in charting the course of the country’s economic growth,” he said. “They now recognize that Team Unity senatorial bets have the qualifications and competence to help propel the economy to a path of long-term growth ? and help the Arroyo administration deliver “social payback” to the masa.”
Team Unity, Magsaysay added, has its legislative agenda running parallel to President Arroyo’s “8 by ’08” agenda, and working toward achieving the goals she spelled out in her Social Payback Program, which intends to spread the fruits of economic growth to the masa, in the form of more jobs and better delivery of education, health and other services.
These fruits from the economic turnaround are boosting the poll chances of Team Unity, he said, because “voters now appreciate the need for a Congress that will be a strategic partner of the Arroyo government in accelerating the growth momentum and delivering fully to our people the social payback from high economic growth.”###
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