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A HEARTBREAKING face of poverty is the present-day preponderance of undernutrition or malnutrition of young Filipino children.

IF I were the country's next president, my overarching program would be to substantially reduce poverty. There are several aspects to this great undertaking. I will deal first with what I call providing "Siguradong Sahod" to a targeted group - those families within the poverty threshold, as currently defined.

AS president, I will devote my whole six-year term to providing a much more effective, efficient, decisive and widely focused national leadership with the primary objective of transforming the Filipino nation into a fair, just, equitable and economically well-developed society and, thus, take a big leap forward from what it is today.

Responding to COVID-19 has knocked global compliance issues down the agenda exposing multinationals to further risk. By reviewing the management of compliance obligations and the role of outsourcing, you can reduce risk and retain focus on core operations.

TO ACCELERATE the development of far-flung areas with good economic potential, we have to connect them by air to the major trade centers. This will require building or modernizing appropriate-capacity airports at government expense. To attract private air carriers to provide flights to these far-flung areas, a system of fare-subsidy to the carriers can be developed based on seat capacity utilization such that, when the capacity utilization reaches an agreed-upon rate, the subsidy ceases. Airports must be provided with night landing facilities so that the airlines can fly their otherwise idle aircraft to these rural destinations at night.

WE NEED to look long-term — beyond the six-year presidential term. There are a number of things we need to do and carry over the long term.

FROM THE END of the World War II to the early 1970s, the Philippines was commonly reported to be in a pole position economically among the neighboring countries constituting the present Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean). Since then, however, we have sharply lagged behind. We are now near the bottom of the pack.

P&A Grant Thornton Tax Advisory and Compliance Head Atty. Eleanor Roque was recently named a Woman in Tax Leader in the Philippines by World Tax in association with the International Tax Review (ITR). She is one of the five Filipinas cited in the ninth edition of the annual list of the world's leading tax practitioners.