Press Release
March 27, 2009

Gordon welcomes PGMA's endorsement of text tax for education

Independent Senator Richard J. Gordon today welcomed President Arroyo's endorsement of a measure requiring giant telecommunications companies (telcos) to allot a small portion of their annual net revenue from text messaging for education.

Gordon said the President has agreed in principle to a proposal that telcos remit to the government a part of their net revenues from local text messaging to improve the country's educational system which has long been in a dismal state.

"I am glad that no less than the President is supportive of this idea to require telcos set aside a portion of their revenue and allocate it for education," he said.

"The President's support of such proposal is very important because our educational system has long been in a dismal state, suffering from the expanding backlogs in education and health care infrastructures," he added.

President Arroyo recently expressed openness to the idea of imposing a 10- or 5-centavo tax on text messaging if it would be earmarked for a specific expenditure, particularly for education.

Gordon, chairman of the Senate committee on government corporations and public enterprises, has been espousing a proposal that aims to improve the country's educational and health care systems by requiring telcos to remit a portion of their text messaging revenues to a government corporation.

The proposal, logged as Senate Bill 2402, seeks to create the Health and Education Acceleration Program (HEAP) Corporation that will spearhead will spearhead the rehabilitation and improvement of education and health care infrastructures in over 43,000 public schools nationwide.

Gordon has also elicited the support of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and House Speaker Prospero Nograles for the HEAP bill. Even telcos, he added, agreed in principle to his proposal.

"All the support we could get is most welcome. We need to convince the telcos not just to support our cause but also to actually take part in the improvement of the country's education and health care systems," he said.

"It is important that we realize that, at some point in time, we should have the determination to find out how we can help the country. I am not going after the telcos here, I am going after poverty and the pitiful state of the country's public educational system," he added.

Using industry figures of an estimated 72 million mobile phone subscribers in the country and about two billion local Short Messaging System (SMS) being processed daily, the bill's passage, if telcos would remit 10 percent, would generate about P73 billion a year or P365 billion in five years.

The country's public school system is confronted with a shortage of at least 12,000 classrooms, four million seats, 63 million textbooks, 39,000 teachers and 8,000 principals.

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