Dear Mr. Mosher,
Thank you very much not only for the loan of your book, but also for the various insights and invaluable advice you gave me during my work on my senior thesis. I apologize for taking so long to return your book to you. Once again, thank you so very much for all your time and consideration.
God bless,
Katrina Ruminski
Dear Steve,
Thank you very much for the D’Agostino piece on the Philippines. (See page 1 article in this issue of PRI Review.)
As of now, the government has already involved the private sector and civil society, notably the confederation of employers and various industry chambers, in propagating family planning and reproductive health policies. This will intensify once the bill in question becomes law. Funding, we suspect, will be coming mainly from the usual external sources.
It may be useful to check with USAID what kind of funding they continue to provide the Philippines for this purpose. There were some allocations last year and this year, for “family planning.” Our sources in Washington told us USAID gave because our government “asked for it.”
What is the latest U.S. policy update on this? I seem to have gotten the impression that development aid will go to education, genuine health programs (not reproductive health simply) and poverty-reduction. Is this on or not?
Our population growth rate continues to go down even as the contraceptive prevalence rate goes down. The government posted a 1.9% growth rate in 2004, from 2.36% ten years ago. It is expected to go down to 1.8% by year 2006. The UNDP and CIA website reports an even lower growth rate which is 1.6%. What then is the objective behind the grants for population control?
Thank you and more power to PRI!
Ma. Fenny C. Tatad
Philippines
