An overwhelming majority of Filipinos are apparently oblivious to the undue political noise and are appreciative of President Rodrigo Duterte’s resolute efforts in his first three months in office to make good on his electoral mandate to restore peace and order, sustain the growth momentum and bring the benefits of our fast-growing economy to all Filipinos.

Department of Finance (DOF) spokesperson Paola Alvarez said this best explains the record net satisfaction ratings of the President in the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey, which the polling firm said showed that his administration was off to a “very good start.”

“Certain groups advancing their narrow and selfish partisan interests have failed to drown out with their political chatter the initial accomplishments of President Duterte, which includes not only his tough campaign versus crime and illegal drugs, but a well-crafted tax reform program designed to help realize his campaign commitment to attack poverty and make high growth inclusive for all,” Alvarez said.

“This should serve as a wake-up call to the President’s critics that most Filipinos are impervious to their political chatter and that they would do our country a lot of good by just supporting the new government’s ambitious efforts to rapidly reduce poverty and transform the Philippines into an upper middle-income country by 2022 and a high-income economy in one generation or by 2040,” said Alvarez.

In the Sept. 24-27 survey conducted by the SWS among 1,20o respondents nationwide, President Duterte obtained a +64 percent net satisfaction rating, besting those received by his post-EDSA 1986 predecessors, save for Fidel Ramos, who got a +66 in 1992. Mr. Duterte’s ratings were either “excellent” or “very good” across all regions, socioeconomic classes, genders and age groups, the SWS survey showed.

Alvarez noted that President Duterte got an “excellent” rating in particular in Mindanao because of his decisive moves to include Mindanaoans in the Cabinet and his regular trips to Davao City and elsewhere in the South, “which prove his commitment to truly devolve political power and growth from Mega Manila to the country’s other regions.”

She said Mr. Duterte’s centerpiece 10-point socioeconomic agenda on inclusive growth was also well received by foreign institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), which remain bullish on the Philippines’ growth momentum under his presidency.

The World Bank has even pointed out that the Philippines’ economic growth could surpass current forecasts should President Duterte make good on his commitments to maintain the country’s sound macroeconomic policies and accelerate infrastructure spending to help cut the poverty rate from 26 percent to 17 percent by 2022.

Even local business groups like the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) and the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) are satisfied with the three-month performance of the Duterte administration, which has already submitted a tax reform package to the Congress that responds to most of their concerns on tax policy and administration.

“The President, through the DOF, has submitted Package One of his comprehensive tax reform package to the Congress in less than 90 days in office. This sense of urgency in reforming our decades-old tax system illustrates the Duterte administration’s commitment to raise enough funds for its 10-point socioeconomic agenda of sustaining economic growth, and more importantly, making sure that it finally benefits all Filipinos,” Alvarez said.

Alvarez said Mr. Duterte’s high ratings show that for all the political noise lately, the Filipino people’s trust and confidence in the President remain high and that they are satisfied with his government’s initial feats in support of his 10-point socioeconomic agenda that aims to free 10 million Filipinos from poverty and transform the Philippines into an upper middle-income economy by the time he leaves office in 2022.

The DOF’s proposed tax reform program, she said, is meant not only to raise funds for the President’s accelerated spending on infrastructure, human capital and social protection, but also to overhaul the decades-old tax system to make it simpler, fairer and more equitable, especially for wage earners and other low-income workers.

This tax plan will also devote more funds for social protection programs that will directly target the country’s most vulnerable sectors, Alvarez said.

“Obviously, Filipinos are aware of this and believe that meaningful change is indeed coming, given the President’s initial accomplishments in just three months in office,” she added.

Alvarez noted that committed projects approved by the Board of Investments in September this year grew by more than 200 percent to P51 billion from P17 billion in September 2015, which is testament to the high investor confidence in the Duterte administration and in its efforts to sustain the strong macroeconomic fundamentals and achieve inclusive growth over the next six years.

She likewise pointed out that although official corruption was perceived to have worsened towards the end of the Aquino administration—as shown by the results of the SWS’ separate survey done over the February-March 2016 period—businessmen have good to excellent expectations for business in the next two years on the Duterte watch.

Alvarez was referring to a separate SWS survey conducted last February to March showing that 63 percent of respondents see “a lot” of corruption in government, while 74 percent have “good to excellent” expectations for their businesses in the next two years. The survey was conducted among 950 respondents, mostly small and medium enterprises in manufacturing, trade, services and financials.

The PCCI had cited the “positive” and “concrete” results in the first 100 days of President Duterte, who, it said, has started addressing the problems that affect the business sector, particularly in power, telecommunications, security and infrastructure.

Earlier, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said the 10-point socioeconomic agenda aims not only to combat generational poverty but also to sustain high growth by, among others, sharpening the country’s global competitiveness to entice more investors to do business here.

This is why the new government has jumpstarted over the past three months, said Dominguez, a vast array of initiatives to improve the ease of doing business in the country and reverse the sharp decline in the Philippines’ ranking in the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s global competitiveness list in the last year of the former Aquino presidency.

“Alongside reducing the poverty incidence by 9 percentage points over the next six years, the new government has given top priority to sharpening the Philippines’ global competitiveness, precisely to improve the ease of doing business here and turn our country into a magnet for investments on the Duterte watch,” Dominguez said.

Finance Undersecretary Gil Beltran has noted, meanwhile, that the Philippines slipped in the WEF competitiveness index partly as a result of its low ranking in infrastructure, which incurred a massive backlog during the Aquino administration

Beltran also pointed out that this year’s WEF assessment for its global competitiveness list was conducted prior to the May 2016 elections or long before President Duterte took over following his landslide victory at the polls.

“The increased spending in infrastructure, which will account for 5 percent of GDP under the Duterte presidency, will be a significant factor in boosting the country’s ranking in the WEF index, Beltran said.

“The Duterte administration aims to reverse the decline in the Philippines’ WEF competitiveness rating that happened in the final year of the former Aquino presidency, resulting primarily from the business community’s nagging concerns over their perceived bureaucratic inefficiencies, poor infrastructure, official corruption and tax issues,” he added.

Dominguez and Beltran were reacting to the sharp fall in the Philippines’ ranking from No. 47 in 2015 to No. 57 this year in the WEF’s Global Competitiveness Report, which is an annual WEF assessment of factors affecting productivity and growth in 138 countries.

In this year’s competitiveness report, WEF said the Top 5 most problematic factors for doing business in the Philippines have to do with the inefficient bureaucracy, inadequate supply of infrastructure, corruption, tax rates, and tax regulations.

Dominguez has pointed out that the very first directive by the President in his State-of-the-Nation Address last July was for all government agencies to cut red tape as a way to speed up the processing of permits and other official documents in the bureaucracy, delays of which have been a perennial complaint of individuals and businesses in previous administrations.

At the DOF, for instance, Dominguez has named Beltran as the head of a newly formed anti-red tape committee mandated to fast-track the processing of official papers not only at the department but in attached agencies as well like the Bureaus of Customs (BOC) and of International Revenue (BIR).

To close the infrastructure backlog, he said the Duterte administration has decided to relax deficit spending from 2 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the past Aquino in government to 3 percent of GDP from hereon, to help Malacañang accelerate spending on its three pro-poor and growth-friendly priorities of public infrastructure, human capital development, and social protection for the most vulnerable sectors of society.

Stamping out official corruption is likewise one of the top priorities of President Duterte, who has, among others, green-lighted the long-pending Freedom of Information (FOI) measure as one way to better check shenanigans and “keep government officials on their toes.”