CEDAW/C/SR.327 English Page 13 77. Ms. FELICIANO (Philippines) said that the Presidential Commission to Fight Poverty had been asked to monitor progress in the implementation of Government anti-poverty programmes and was focusing on the Minimum Basic Needs Indicator, which did not include gender-disaggregated data at the time of the report. However, in view of State's intention to pursue a gender-responsive povertyalleviation strategy, some efforts had been initiated to make the Indicator more gender-responsive. 78. The laws described in paragraphs 17 and 18 of the fourth report (CEDAW/C/PHI/4) were still new at the time of the report, so their impact on women was difficult to measure. However, it was known that 67 per cent of the 97,766 beneficiaries of a law providing assistance to micro- and cottage enterprises were women. The equal rights of women to own land, to share in farm production and to be represented on advisory bodies were explicitly guaranteed under the Agrarian Reform Law. The Department of Agrarian Reform also continued to reform its administrative policies and guidelines to ensure the fulfillment of the laws's intent. However, figures showed that the Government still had much to do; for example, less than 3 per cent of the approximately 13.5 million hectares of land distributed under the agrarian reform programme were owned by women. 79. Water sanitation facilities under the World Bank's first rural water supply and sanitation project had benefited over 200,000 households in rural communities. Nevertheless, the project was seen as already having greatly eased women's traditional burden of procuring water. 80. Structural adjustment programmes had contributed to a robust economy in 1996 and to the lowering of inflation. There were indications, however, that rural women workers had been adversely affected in the short term. The Government recognized that trade liberalization in itself would not bring about equality and economic development, and it had therefore formulated safeguard mechanisms to cushion the adverse impact of that process. The pace and extent of the reform of agricultural trade policies, for example, had been harmonized with the sector's ability to cope with the challenges of a more open trade regime. The challenge was now to determine the other areas in which women were adversely impacted and to provide them with adequate support, including alternative economic opportunities. 81. On the question of the impact of imported agricultural products on the economic status of women in the agricultural sector, the Government, as a signatory to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), was committed to granting international access to its domestic market and to the reduction of domestic and export subsidies. As producers, women farmers stood to benefit from trade liberalization, which would bring cheaper inputs and better technology, thereby resulting in lower production costs and improved quality of output. International competition, moreover, would force local industries to become more efficient and competitive. 82. As for the right of women to own land, the Family Code and Republic Act 7192 provided for the right of women to own property and to contract employment and credit without their husband's consent. The provisions of the Labour Code were uniformly applied to men and women in agribusinesses. The / ...