Alagang Angara

With the announcement made by Philippine Airlines (PAL) that it has laid off 300 of its personnel, the government cannot afford to be complacent in addressing the impacts of the COVID-19 on the economy, Senator Sonny Angara said today.

“We have been spared from deaths caused by COVID-19 but sadly the pandemic has taken away the jobs of 300 hardworking men and women of our country's flag carrier,” Angara said. 

Government was told to urgently craft a “resilience plan” that will allow the economy “to deftly evade” the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic and the shutdown of plants and back offices of Honda, Wells Fargo and other multinationals in the country.

The call was made by Sen. Sonny Angara as the Senate finance committee opens a series of hearings that will draw a roadmap to create world-class products and services that will proudly bear the “Tatak Pinoy” brand.

The Senate Committee on Finance is set to hold an inquiry tomorrow on the implementation of the government’s programs on industrialization and employment-generation to determine what these have accomplished so far, which ones are working and the next steps needed to ensure its sustainability.

Senator Sonny Angara is pushing for a review of the various programs for the country’s youth to see if these have been effective and to determine the next steps needed to further empower this sector of society.

As the chairman of the Committee on Youth, Angara filed Senate Resolution No. 320 to evaluate the efficacy of all existing government programs for the country’s youth “so that we’ll have an idea which one’s are working and relevant and which are not.”

The government is stepping up efforts to improve the quality of products and services produced in the country in order to boost demand, not only domestically, but globally with an unprecedented increase in the budget of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) in 2020.

Senator Sonny Angara has filed a bill to increase the bed capacity of the East Avenue Medical Center in Quezon City from the current 600 to 1,000.

A tertiary hospital under the jurisdiction of the Department of Health, the EAMC is constantly operating at overcapacity so in order to accommodate more patients in need of medical attention, Angara said there is an urgent need to increase its bed capacity.

The last time the EAMC was able to increase its bed capacity was in 1997 when Congress passed Republic Act 8345, which added 250 beds to its then 350-bed capacity.

Now that the alert level for Taal Volcano has been lowered from four to three, Senator Sonny Angara urged all the concerned government agencies to immediately conduct an assessment of the damage brought about by the eruption two weeks ago.

Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images

Statement of Sen Angara on the sudden demise of Kobe Bryant

"Because he was bringing his daughter to a basketball tournament, then it can be said that Kobe died with his sneakers on, for the love of the game. 

In his prime, he was a superstar waited on by a staff of hundreds. In retirement, he was happiest as coach-cheerleader of the most important ball player in his life. 

In order to fuel the efforts to make Philippine products and services more competitive, particularly enterprises geared towards helping the poor, over P300 million was provided under the 2020 General Appropriations Act as seed money for the establishment of an innovation fund, Senator Sonny Angara said today.

As mandated by Republic Act 11293 or the Philippine Innovation Act, an innovation fund will be established “to strengthen entrepreneurship and enterprises engaged in developing innovative solutions benefitting the poorest of the poor.” 

To better equip the government for a world that is fast becoming more digital and interconnected, the budget of the Department of Information and Communications (DICT) was granted an increase of P6.2 billion under the 2020 General Appropriations Act, Senator Sonny Angara said today.

From the P3.7 billion in the National Expenditure Program that was submitted by Malacañang to Congress last year, the DICT’s 2020 budget was hiked to close to P10 billion in the P4.1 trillion GAA.