The Philippines is for the Philippines. We can defend ourselves.

The Philippines is strategically located and blessed with the greatest resource: its people, who are hard-working, very loyal, and very adaptive.

Typhoon Haiyan showed the entire world how vulnerable the Philippines as well as other developing countries are to natural disasters.

We in the Philippines know we have to perform our own role in terms of promoting peace in the world. We are actually members of the U.N. peacekeeping forces in many areas.

The Philippines has vast minerals that are still untapped. It has one of the world's largest deposits of gold, nickel, copper and chromite. Through responsible mining, we intend to generate more revenues from the extraction of these resources.

Tourism is a crucial industry that could employ millions of Filipinos, skilled and unskilled alike, cross those 7,107 islands of the Philippines. From the current projection of 3.3 million tourist arrivals in 2010, our aim is to eventually attract 6 million tourists. In the process, we expect to create 3 million jobs in the next six years.