Better Days

By Sonny Angara Since the economy opened up after the COVID-19 pandemic, tourism has been a key contributor to the growth of the Philippine economy. Based on official data from the Philippine Statistics Authority, tourism made up 6.2 percent of the economy as measured by gross domestic product. The tourism sector is also an important …

By Sonny Angara Since assuming the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Finance in 2019, we have been committed towards strengthening our public health care system. Providing access to quality health care to all, particularly to our disadvantaged countrymen, is one of the most important responsibilities of government. Every year when we tackle the proposed …

  By Sonny Angara In the current deliberations on the proposed amendments to the economic provisions of the 1987 Constitution, one of the overarching themes has been the need for the country to catch up with the rest of the world. For a time, the Philippines was far ahead of many of its Southeast Asian …

  By Sonny Angara By the end of this month, a new school year will officially start. Using the numbers recorded last year for SY 2023-2024, we can reasonably expect that more or less 27 million learners will be enrolling in the basic education system this time around — 23.2 million in public schools, 3.7 …

  bettBy Sonny Angara More than 20 years have passed since Republic Act 9184 or the Government Procurement Reform Act (GPRA) was enacted into law. Introduced by my father, the former Senate President Edgardo Angara, the GPRA was considered a world-class, landmark law for putting in place strong mechanisms to curb corruption in government procurement. …

  By Sonny Angara The Philippine National Police reported a rise in cybercrime cases during the first quarter of 2024. According to the police’s Anti-Cybercrime Group (ACG), there were 4,469 cases recorded from January to March of 2024. This was an increase of almost 22 percent from the 3,668 cases over the same period in 2023. …

  By Sonny Angara The year 2024 marks the 50th year of Nutrition Month is being celebrated in the Philippines. It was in 1974, during the administration of then President Ferdinand Marcos that the celebration of Nutrition Month started by virtue of Presidential Decree No. 491, s. 1974, which also paved the way for the creation …

  By Sonny Angara The Pulitzer Prizes are considered among the most prestigious, if not the most prestigious awards for the fields of journalism, books, drama, and music. This year we saw three Filipinas who were among the finalists of the Pulitzer for journalism: New York Times contributor Hannah Reyes Morales for feature photography; and …

  By Sonny Angara Over the past two years, we are seeing a resurgence in the Philippine tourism industry. The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) recently came out with its 2023 Philippine Tourism Satellite Accounts data, which showed the sector posting the highest growth rate since the agency started monitoring this in the year 2000. PSA measures the …

  By Sonny Angara Over the past few decades, we have seen an exponential growth in the use of technology and along with it, the amount of information that is being made available at the fingertips of people. A while back, the amount of content an individual can consume was dependent on his or her capability to …