Arroyo told: Don’t use students to justify VAT

MANILA, Philippines – Two days before the formal opening of classes, members of Youth Against Debt (YAD) lambasted Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s additional P1-billion fund for students saying it is a cheap trick to use students and their accessibility problem to education as basis for the justification of the widely hated value-added tax (VAT).

In a statement, the youth group described Mrs. Arroyo’s VAT-powered Students Assistance Fund for Education for a Strong Republic, or “Safe for SR” as pure gimmickry, shallow and not enough to be of any ambulatory measure to help the students compensate for the rising cost of education.

Groups say ‘Katas ng VAT’ nowhere near Arroyo P1.3T education debt

By ANGELO L. GUTIERREZ

From abs-cbnNEWS.com

President Arroyo’s recent unveiling of the P1-billion “Katas ng VAT Pantawid Aral” could have made her look like a generous leader, but education advocacy groups said Friday that the amount is nowhere near her administration’s incurred debt to the education sector.

Based on the Delors Benchmark, the internationally-agreed benchmark for education budget since its presentation to the UNESCO in 1996, the Arroyo administration was short of P272.4 billion in education spending for 2007, said the education advocates.