WITH an 88 percent popularity rating, the highest ever for an elected President, Benigno Aquino III has the momentum and goodwill he needs to immediately introduce critical governance, economic and fiscal reforms needed to catapult our nation to the league of Asia?s fast-growing economies.

Indonesia?s Yudyohono marked his administration with a firm resolve to clamp down on graft and corruption. The rest of the world saw how serious he was in pursuing the clean-up drive. Foreign investments soon poured in, tourism picked up, financial markets became vibrant and there was no looking back.

President Aquino is right, there is no need to invent or increase tax rates. The bureaus of Customs and Internal Revenue just have to collect the right amount of taxes and custom duties. If we have an honest taxman, ordinary citizens and corporate citizens will pay the right taxes.

Pres. Aquino should also look at how to make better use of Congress? pork barrel. It must be equitably distributed to even out progress in the countryside. The Internal Revenue Allotments to local governments should also be rationalized.

As President, he must do his homework diligently, study relevant economic strategies and closely look at successful governance, business and economic models abroad.

These can be tailor-fitted to work here.

Here are classic examples: In Russia and in Brazil, which chronically suffered from huge tax collections shortfalls, the government adopted counter-intuitive revenue measures.

Both lowered corporate tax rates from high 30s to mid 20s. They are now collecting record tax payments as their tax bases have broadened and given incentives to pay the required taxes.

In our economic structure where informal industries comprise about 40 percent of our Gross Domestic Product, this radical approach may be the panacea.

He can further look into the pension fund system in South America, traffic management in Korea, railway systems in Europe, environment protection approach in New Zealand, electronics and logistics industries in Singapore, and many more.

He must concretize a national plan with coherent components, e.g., governance platform, economic agenda, infrastructure program, capital and financial markets thrusts, legislative framework needed as scaffolding to support all these critical components of this national development plan.

If we can sustain our economic growth of 7-10 percent a year for the next six to seven years, we will graduate to become the next Indonesia or even the next Singapore.

This can be achieved through infrastructure modernization of ports, airports, tollways, railways and economic zones.

If this plan is clear to all the citizenry, stakeholders and key market and business players, then all of us will know how we can do our respective roles to support the plan. It will be our guiding light, the symbol of our national aspiration and, united, we will all collectively pursue it.

We are also proud to proclaim that our key economic resource is our skilled and talented OFWs.

There are 3,000 Filipinos who leave the country every day and that would be almost a 100,000 a month and over a million a year accretive to the existing 8 to 10 million Filipinos deployed overseas.

Their remittances keep our economy afloat, providing the country with needed dollar resources.

There is a need to develop a program for our OFWs that will standardize and further enhance their skills and trade so that we can develop a national branding of high quality and reliability that is the OFW.

The President should put to task the DSWD to come up with a meaningful program to minimize social costs, e.g., family problems, separation, abandonment of children, drug addiction, that are consequences of migrating family member(s).

The DoF, DTI and BSP, on the other hand, should help the OFWs in financial and investment literacy so that their hardearned income will not go to pyramiding and other illegal investment schemes, gambling and wasteful expenditures.

The aggregate amount of money lost in the pyramiding and other illegal investment schemes of over P100 billion is even bigger than the P80-billion mutual fund industry.

Finally, the DoF and BSP, should be directed by the President to study how the government can harness the use of the remittances to pursue the country?s economic programs.

The OFWs? remittances can be securitized using our securitization law and within the regulatory framework, unlock the mobilization of longer dated investments in critical infrastructure programs of the government and the private sector.

It is also high time that he appoint a Secretary of Agriculture who will not just implore the whole nation to hope and pray that there will be more rains to feed our agricultural lands because, if that is the case, we might just designate a prelate to head that department so all that person can do is pray for rain.

The DA Secretary can forcefully intervene by way of creative governance to pursue much needed rehabilitation of the country?s irrigation systems, some of which date back to pre-World War II era, so water sources are sustained and new sources tapped to support our agriculture.

There is a study that because of the tremendous heat during summer, 40 percent of water is lost even before reaching the roots of the plant so water engineering solutions should be devised to avoid this.

In the area of mining, Salvador Lopez wrote a book about the history of mining in the Philippines. The title of the book is ?Isles of Gold?. It speaks of the bountiful mineral resources in the country, i.e., nickel, coal, silver and gold.

The government should thus take stock of all its natural resources, e.g., geothermal, land, sea, minerals, etc. and create comprehensive and sensible plans to put them into good and sustainable use for the benefit of all Filipinos.