reach the amount of three million dollars. There was need of immediate aid from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Something along this line was obtained. Again, loans from the United States, as well as some increase in the national revenues, were to help the new Republic. President Roxas, with bold steps, met the situation with the same confidence he exuded in his inaugural address, when he said: "The system of free but guided enterprise is our system". Among the main remedies proposed was the establishment of the Philippine Rehabilitation Finance Corporation. This entity would be responsible for the construction of twelve thousand houses and for the grant of easy-term loans in the amount of P177,000,000. Another proposal was the creation of the Central Bank of the Philippines to help stabilize the Philippine dollar reserves and coordinate and the nations banking activities gearing them to the economic progress. Concentrating on the sugar industry, Roxas would exert such efforts as to succeed in increasing production from 13,000 tons at the time of the Philippine liberation to an all-high of one million tons. Reconstruction after the war The war had burned cities and towns, ruined farms and factories, blasted roads and bridges, shattered industries and commerce, massacred thousands of civilians, and paralyzed the educational system, where 80% of the school buildings, their equipment, laboratories and furniture were destroyed. Numberless books, invaluable documents and works of art, irreplaceable historical relics and family heirlooms, hundreds of churches and temples were burned. The reconstruction of the damaged school buildings alone cost more than P126,000,000,000. Pike noted that the Japanese as part of their efforts of "liberation" from American imperialism by bringing the Philippines into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere "...had smashed industrial buildings, banks, government offices and hotels. Infrastructure including ports had been sabotaged or destroyed in the heavy fighting for Manila". The new republic began to function on an annual deficit of over P200,000,000 with little prospect of a balanced budget for some years to come. Manila and other cities then were infested with criminal gangs which used techniques of American gangsters in some activities—bank holdups, kidnapping and burglaries. In rural regions, especially the provinces of Central Luzon and the Southern Tagalog regions, the brigands terrorized towns and barrios. Agrarian Reform In 1946, shortly after his induction to presidency, Roxas proclaimed the Rice Share Tenancy Act of 1933 effective throughout the country.