...the UK's top 10 destination list

Philippines in UK’s top 10 countries to see in 2014
 

by Ron B. Lopez

Manila Bulletin
January 5, 2014

 

 

The Philippines is among the Top 10 Countries worldwide to visit this 2014, according to British travel guidebook Rough Guides.

In its 2014 edition, the Philippines made it to the 10th place along with other beautiful and culturally-rich countries. Rough Guides cited Philippines’ natural places that are “not to miss” which include the islands of Boracay, the limestone islands El Nido in Palawan, the coasts of Coron that hides beautiful beaches and pristine mountain lakes, and Puerto Gallera.

Rough Guides said Boracay’s enchanting white beach on picture-postcard setting is one of the country’s

major tourist draws.

The Rough Guides, known for its travel references, has also recommended a must-visit in Chocolate Hills in Bohol, despite being partly damaged by the 7.2-magnitude earthquake the struck the province last year. It also recommended to visitors to see the tiny primate Tarsiers in the region.

“Soak up the bizarre landscape of Bohol’s iconic Chocolate Hills, conical brown-green mounds said to be the calcified tears of a broken-hearted giant,” Rough Guides said.

Aside from the crystal-clear waters of Philippine beaches, Rough Guides also suggest to tourists to also try to explore the country’s beautiful mountains and the majestic top views they offier, including the perfectly-coned Mt. Mayon and mountain lakes in Mt. Pinatubo.

Rough Guide describes the crystal-clear waters of Apo Reef Marine Natural Park in Mindoro as a “scuba diver’s dream,” along with other underground river in the country.

Aside from places, tourist should also explore the traditions and colorful festivals in the country like the Ati-Atihan Festival on Panay to see the “indigenous dress and learn tribal dances,” the travel advisor said, adding that if one gets exhausted from the heat of the sun, a tall glass of Halo-halo, a local sweet icy dessert, will quench tourist’ thirst.

Other countries in Rough Guides’ Top 10 countries to visit in 2014 are Georgia in Central Asia, Turkey, Macedonia, Japan, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Brazil, Bulgaria and Madagascar.

 

...the model

WB: Phl a model for cash transfer By Neil Jerome Morales The Philippine Star Updated April 21, 2012

WASHINGTON – The World Bank (WB) has tagged the Philippines as a model in providing a social safety net that cushions the impact of global financial and economic problems.

The Philippines, for its part, wants to improve its Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4P) by lengthening the period that beneficiaries receive cash.

“We at the Bank have helped extend conditional cash transfer programs to about 40 other countries. So we had the Philippines (Social Welfare) secretary here and they have expanded to three million families,” World Bank president Robert Zoellick said on Thursday, at the start of the 2012 WB-IMF Spring Meetings here.

“Let us focus on basic safety nets for every country to deal with the volatility and uncertainty, because the other lesson we learned is if you wait until the crisis, it is too late,” Zoellick added.

The Philippines began its 4P or the conditional cash transfer program in 2008, targeting to regularly provide cash to 5.2 million households.

“In the General Appropriations Act, we were given P39 million to add 700,000 beneficiaries this year and we have done so,” Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman told The STAR in a forum at the sidelines of the meetings.

“We are on target and we are now at three million households. What we are doing now is strengthening and ensuring that we are doing well,” Soliman said.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development wants to reach 5.2 million households in 2015.

But new plans are under way for the safety net program of the country.

“We are reviewing it to increase the age because we want to make it 0-18 years old. That would require additional funds so that is what we are looking at and we are doing some computation if we can afford it,” Soliman said.

To date, 4P helps keep 0-14-year-old children in school through $7 per month aid per child, with a maximum of three children per household.

“We are looking at the need for children to finish high school,” Soliman said.

Fourteen-year-old children are usually in second or third year of the four-year secondary school curriculum.

Under the K+12 basic education program that will be implemented this year, students will have four years of junior high school (Grades 7 to 10) and two years of senior high school (Grades 11 to 12).

Soliman said the department can implement its lengthened aid as early as 2014 if there is sufficient funding, which is still subject to approval of the Department of Budget and Management.

The World Bank said that worldwide, three out of five people in developing countries and four of five people in the world’s poorest countries lack safety net coverage.

The World Bank said countries are struggling to protect their most vulnerable citizens from the negative impacts of global financial volatility and food and fuel price hikes.

“Effective safety net coverage overcomes poverty and promotes economic opportunity and gender equality by helping people find jobs, cope with economic shocks, and improve the health, education, and wellbeing of their children,” Zoellick said.

“There is a push for the national government to deliver education, health and infrastructures well because people need it,” Soliman said.

The World Bank said expanding cost-effective safety nets like cash transfers, food assistance, public works programs, and fee waivers help countries respond to crises.

“It is not a question of whether countries can afford to have safety net programs... It is whether we can afford not to have them,” said Ato Sufian Ahmed, Minister of Finance and Economic Development of Ethiopia, where the Productive Safety Nets Program has protected millions from famine.

The World Bank Group support for social protection and labor programs reached $11.5 billion in 83 countries during the last decade.

Serious threats

Meanwhile, in its Global Monitoring Report (GMR) 2012, the World Bank said developing nations continue to face serious threats to the mortality levels of child and mother, as well as reducing levels of poverty and potable water.

The World Bank said that the world is significantly off-track on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) to reduce mortality rates of mothers and children under five.

“As a result, these goals will not be met in any developing region by 2015. Progress is slowest on maternal mortality, with only one-third of the targeted reduction achieved thus far. Progress on reducing infant and child mortality is similarly dismal, with only 50 percent of the targeted decline achieved,” the report stated.

WB chief economist and senior vice president Justin Yifu Lin said that high and volatile food price works against the attainment of many MDGs, as they erode consumer purchasing power and prevent millions of people from escaping poverty and hunger.

“Dealing with food price volatility must be a high priority, especially as nutrition has been one of the forgotten MDGs,” Lin added.

The report stressed that a fragile global economy would slow down human development goals.

The report estimated that 1.02 billion will remain in extreme poverty in 2015.

“According to our projections, an estimated 1.02 billion people will still be living in extreme poverty in 2015.

Clearly, assistance must be leveraged in new ways if we are to improve food security and nutrition, particularly for the poor and vulnerable,” said Jos Verbeek, lead author of the report and lead economist for the World Bank.

Regional progress towards the MDGs is uneven.

The report said that while upper middle-income countries are on track to achieve most targets, low-income or fragile countries are lagging, with only two goals achieved or on-track.

What is worse is that commodity prices remain volatile while food prices are also declining, it said.

The World Bank, however, said that complicating matters is that development assistance is starting to dry up or shrink due to the crisis as well as the strengthening of some currencies in the Asian region. – With Ted Torres