Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez took pride in the legislative accomplishments of the House of Representatives, saying the positive impact of laws passed by the 19th Congress and signed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is now being felt by Filipinos.
“We have done our homework. We addressed concerns on food security, climate change, social protection, tourism, public health, public order and safety, among others. In fact, the fruits of our overarching development agenda initiatives for the past two years are now slowly being felt across the nation,” Romualdez told his colleagues at the start of the third and last regular session of Congress July 22.
To prove his point, the leader of the 300-plus-strong House cited the country’s economic performance in recent years, adding that the economy grew by an average of 6.1 percent, from the third quarter of 2022 to the first quarter of 2024.
For the first quarter of 2024 alone, the Philippine economy outperformed Indonesia (5.1 percent), Malaysia (4.2 percent), Singapore (2.7 percent), and Thailand (1.5 percent), the Speaker said in a press release from his office.
He noted that in May, the National Economic and Development Authority projected that the country’s growth target of six to seven percent this year is achievable with the implementation of appropriate government policies.
“As a result, the country is expected to continue outperforming most emerging economies and expand further to a range of 6.5 percent to 7.5 percent in 2025,” Romualdez said.
He also pointed out that the accomplishments of the House “reflect our proactive stance in catering to the needs of the people by passing these much-needed legislation that are attuned to the Philippine Development Plan and the Eight-Point Socio-economic Agenda under the Medium-term Fiscal Framework of the President.”
The Speaker said that since the start of the first regular session in July 2022, the House of Representatives has been instrumental in the swift passage of 77 laws, many of which are of national importance.
In the second regular session, 58 laws were enacted as “a result of the House’s outstanding consensus-building and resolute efforts to accomplish the tasks at hand.”
Romualdez also said that the House achieved a 100-percent approval on third and final reading of all the 17 priority measures identified by Marcos in his 2023 State of the Nation Address. ||
