MANILA, Philippines (The Adobo Chronicles® ) – President NoyNoy Aquino will have a lasting legacy to leave behind when his term as president expires in 2016.

Today, Aquino announced that the Philippines is now officially a “rich country,” thanks to his administration’s economic and social programs over the last five years. “We’re now at par with first world countries in the West,” he said.

Aquino made the announcement after receiving a report from the Japanese Cooperation Agency (JICA) confirming that the Philippines is losing 2.4 Billion pesos daily because of the traffic situation in Metro Manila.

The JICA report noted that because of daily congested traffic, workers report late to work, business meetings are cancelled, commercial transactions are  jeopardized, and delivery of goods and services come to a stand still. In other words, productivity is cut by more than half, which is costing both government and private enterprises huge revenue losses.

But Aquino and his technocrat advisers are looking at the positive side to this loss of revenue. The president said that the fact that “our country can afford to lose billions of pesos every single day means we have the money to spare, and only rich  countries have that capability.”

Is it any wonder then that the government seems disinterested in solving the nightmarish transportation and traffic problems of the country, especially in Metro Manila?