PHILIPPINES: President Aquino Receives Progress Report on UN's Millennium Development

President Benigno S. Aquino III received from Socio Economic Planning Secretary Cayetano Paderanga, Jr. the fourth Progress Report on the Philippines' compliance to the United Nations Millenium Development Goals during ceremonies held at the Dusit Thani Hotel in Makati City Wednesday morning.

In his speech keynoting the event, President Aquino underscored the importance of the MDGs and complying with its development objectives.“The United Nation's Millennium Development Goals have served as a blueprint for progress for many countries since the year 2000. The millenium goals are a reflection of humanity's aspirations – to break the chains of ignorance and disease, poverty and injustice. To end in our new millennium, the millennia-old scourges of humankind,” he said.The Philippines Fourth Progress Report on the Millenium Development Goals, according to President Aquino, is an important instrument in assessing where the country now stands as far as the MDG's are concerned. This report, which contains data from 1990 to 2009, identifies the threats that remain, how to address them, and other efforts needed to focus on to fulfill the county's commitment of realizing the MDGs by 2015.In his report, Paderanga highlighted the need to accelerate the efforts to realize the goals that the country is lagging behind in, namely: poverty reduction, education and maternal health.He stressed that the country has high probabilities of meeting the targets on reducing child mortality; promoting women empowerment; reversing the incidence of malaria and tuberculosis; and providing access to sanitary toilet facilities, which the country has already surpassed.President Aquino said the government, through the Department of Social Welfare and Development has begun implementing poverty reduction programs such as the Conditional Cash Transfers and the Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan-Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services to help augment a Filipino family's income through the distribution of cash grants and livelihood projects, respectively.The Fourth Progress Report will be presented by the President to the United Nations during the High Level Plenary Meeting on the MDGs in New York on September 20-22.The Summit was called by UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon to take stock of proven MDG initiatives and for governments to commit to a concrete action agenda to achieve the goals in the next five years.