Economic and scientific cooperation

NO HOLDS BARRED
By Ike Señeres

MANILA -- June 18 was a very important day for my TV show. It was the day when I had the honor of having Ambassador Edsel T. Custodio as my guest. The good Ambassador is now the Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs for International Economic Relations (IER). He is also the Senior Official Minister of the Philippines for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum.

July 2 also became a very important day for my show. It was the day when Deputy Director General Rolando G. Tungpalan of the National Economic Development Authority was guest in my show. He is also concurrently the Official Economic Spokesperson of the government, in tandem with Prof. Gary B. Olivar who also holds the same title.

Already a regular guest in my show, Prof. Olivar will now be joined by Usec Custodio and Usec Tungpalan as regular guests, thus establishing my show as a major source of official information about economic matters, a very critical need for my audience that is generally composed of stock traders, analysts, investors, businessmen and entrepreneurs.

Economic information is one thing, economic cooperation is another. Knowing the nature of their work, I could already see that these three professionals could contribute greatly to the consensus to work towards economic cooperation, a consensus that has gradually emerged among my regular guests.

I know Edsel from way back, when I was still a Press Attaché and he was still a Trade Attaché. The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) is very fortunate to have him, considering his wealth of experience in trade promotion, his main function now. I also know Gary from way back. We were both University Councilor in UP Diliman, although he belonged to an earlier Council. Just recently, he became my professor in Language of Business (LOB) for Journalists, a short course that I took at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM).

Dr. Ernie Gonzales, President of National Economic Protection Association (NEPA) is a native of Pateros and is among the many long term residents of his community who wants to their portion of the Pasig River come back to life again. Also a regular guest in my TV program, Ernie and I discussed the fact that both the Mekong River and the Ohio River were brought back to life, giving us the hope that the Pasig River, or at least their portion of it could also be resurrected.

What could possibly be the connection between Edsel, Ronnie, Gary and Ernie? As head of the DFA-IER and APEC-SOM, Edsel has direct access to many material and human resources that could be harnessed towards the goal of river clean-ups. As joint Economic Spokesmen, Ronnie and Gary are in a position to support economic initiatives, including environmental actions. As head of NEPA, Ernie has a large mass base that could also be mobilized towards this goal.

It was Mr. Joseph Reynolds who first told me about the fact that the Pateros River is in effect no longer a river, because it has practically become a dumpsite for garbage, with hardly any water to see. He suggested that any attempt to clean up the river should also be accompanied by massive tree planting, to prevent further erosion and to strengthen the water holding capabilities of the river banks.

As I told him about our plan to clean up the Pateros River, Joe brought forward the argument that the best place to start the clean up is the Sierra Madre mountain range, because not unless these mountains are cleaned, debris from it will always flow into the river system that includes the rest of the Pasig River, Laguna Lake and Manila Bay as well.

Joe is a man of action, and he has the real track record of actually being able to revive fifty hectares of denuded mountains, bringing it back almost to the natural forest that God had made. I believe that he is right, but now he has awakened us to the reality that it is not enough to clean our rivers, we must also clean the mountains where the debris comes from. We are facing a big task ahead of us, but with the help of Edsel, we could bring in the foreign scientists who could provide the scientific solutions to this big problem.

Watch my TV show “Bears & Bulls”, a daily coverage of the Philippine Stock Exchange. 9:00 am to 1:00 pm in Global News Network. Email iseneres@yahoo.com or text +639293605140 for local cable listings.