CITING the need for a “booster shot for 2020,” three leaders of the House of Representatives on Monday filed the Bayanihan to Rebuild as One Act, which will provide P247 billion in emergency response and economic recovery programs.
House Majority Leader Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, AAMBIS-OWA Rep. Sharon S. Garin, and House Commitee on Ways and Means Chairman Joey Sarte Salceda filed House Bill 8059, or the Bayanihan III.
While the first two Bayanihan laws were able to keep the economy afloat, Salceda said he believes that the third stimulus measure is “the necessary booster shot so we can truly begin recuperating in 2021.”
Salceda said the House is likely to pass the measure within the next two weeks.
Salceda, who also cochairs the House Economic Stimulus and Recovery Cluster, said the interventions are made primarily to ensure that national and local government units can mobilize “robust response and recovery programs” in the face of recent typhoons and slower than expected recovery in the third quarter of the year.
“I made it clear to the economic managers that if we recover more quickly than expected in the 3rd quarter, a third Bayanihan may no longer be necessary. Seeing as it is that the economy did not recover as quickly as expected in the past quarter, and given the recent spate of typhoons, we need to provide emergency aid,” Salceda said.
The measure is divided mainly into health, regulatory, and economic interventions.
The bill includes P20 billion for the procurement of vaccines, the creation of a vaccine committee, and measures to ensure the sufficiency of health supplies.
The proposal also contains rental housing relief, an eviction moratorium, condonation of agrarian reform loans, small business regulatory relief, and credit mediation and refinancing assistance.
The measure includes a P40-billion local government support fund for calamity response, P100 billion in health- and resiliency-related infrastructure programs, P10 billion in assistance programs for agriculture and fisheries, P7 billion for rent refinancing, P10 billion for companies to borrow for paying 13th month benefits, P10 billion for Tulong Para sa Displaced workers (Tupad), P10 billion for the Covid Adjustment Measures Program (CAMP), P10 billion for Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situation (AICS), P10 billion for the Medical Assistance for Indigents Program (MAIP), P5 billion each for Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) and the Commission on Higher Education, and another P10 billion for DepEd programs.
“You will see that my contribution here is primarily the structural credit interventions. We have already introduced around P1.9 trillion in new liquidity due to monetary policies. But credit uptake is still low; part of it is due to demand. But part of it is due to the structural defects of usual loan products. That’s why the state has to come in and create more favorable loan structures,” Salceda said.
Necessary
Salceda said that while he understands the reservations of the Executive Branch to spend more money for the Covid-19 response effort, he believes that a third stimulus program is necessary to ensure that the crisis does not “eat up too much of our economic structure.”
“It is very hard to recover when so many businesses have already closed for good,” Salceda said.
“The Executive can make their concerns known, and we will take them into consideration. They can even give us a fiscal limit to work on. But what we cannot accept is the idea that we have spent enough in 2020. That may have been barely true if the recent calamities did not strike. But the sheer fact is that more people have gone into poverty this year than we expected,” Salceda said.
The lawmaker said the Ways and Means committee already passed measures with P691 billion in 5-year revenue potential, saying “that is more than enough to keep our credit ratings attractive.”
According to Salceda, “Secretary [Carlos] Dominguez does not have to worry about fiscal discipline on the part of the House.
If there is only so much in Bayanihan III that the government can afford, we will cooperate. But it cannot be zero. If there are tax reforms that need to be enacted so that the medium-term fiscal overhang does not gape too much, I will do it in the committee on Ways and Means.”
Under the bill, subsidy and stimulus measures shall be funded from 2020 General Appropriations Act (GAA), savings pooled pursuant to Republic Act 11469 or the Bayanihan To Heal as One Act, excess revenue collections in any one of the identified tax or non-tax revenue sources from its corresponding revenue collection target, as provided in the FY 2020 Budget of Expenditures and Sources of Financing (BESF), new revenue collections or those arising from new tax or non-tax sources which are not part of nor included in the original sources included in the FY 2020 BESF; and all amounts derived from the cash, funds, and investments held by any GOCC or any national government agency.