A senior lawmaker on Thursday backed the call of economic managers and business groups for Congress to focus on “doable” legislations to attract foreign direct investments (FDI) and accelerate economic recovery.
Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte issued the statement, saying that the revival of the Charter change (Cha-cha) initiative at this time would only sidetrack national efforts to overcome the coronavirus pandemic and save sectors in distress.
While he has long been a Cha-cha advocate, Villafuerte said “now is the wrong time to pursue this politically sensitive and potentially divisive issue as it would only deflect national attention from the principal concerns of Covid-19 response and economic recovery.”
“Charter change should have been done yesterday,” said Villafuerte. “Amid the health and economic crises now sweeping across the globe, we should keep our focus on the Covid-19 vaccine program, which will be the only way of putting any semblance of normalcy back into our lives.”
According to Villafuerte, Congress and all other sectors should work together with Malacañang in making sure that Filipinos are able to acquire sufficient vaccines at a reasonable cost soon enough, and that the government could deliver on its commitment to inoculate some 70 million Filipinos.
“Right now we are just catching up with other countries that have already rolled out their mass vaccination programs,” he added.
Villafuerte said lawmakers should also help carry out an information blitz in their respective districts amid the apparent low public support nationwide for the Covid-19 immunization program.
Alongside Covid-19 response, Villafuerte said the nation’s focus should also remain at this point on accelerating economic recovery and regaining the economy’s pre-Covid growth momentum.
Villafuerte agreed with Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III who said at a Tuesday hearing of the House Committee on Constitutional Amendments that Congress can help speed up economic recovery by passing the proposed Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises Act (CREATE) and the Government Financial Institutions Unified Initiatives to Distressed Enterprises for Economic Recovery (GUIDE) Act as stimulus packages.
Dominguez said the approval of these measures should be complemented by the congressional passage of pending bills to make the economy more attractive to foreign investors, particularly the amendments to the Foreign Investment Act (FIA), Retail Trade Liberalization Act (RTLA) and the Public Service Act (PSA).
Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez similarly batted for the passage of the proposed FIA, PSA and RTLA during the same House committee hearing.
According to Villafuerte, “These bills should be our doables this year in lieu of Cha-cha.”
In contrast, said Villafuerte, “the pending economic bills meant to stimulate the economy and ease restrictions on foreign participation in local businesses would, once passed and enacted into law, usher in immediate reform that would help hasten economic recovery and transform the Philippines into a magnet for FDI in the region.”
CREATE, for instance would reduce the corporate income tax (CIT) for micro, small and medium scale enterprises (MSMEs) from the current 30 percent to just 20 percent, thus becoming the biggest stimulus ever for businesses, said Villafuerte who co-authored the House-approved version of this bill.
The hefty CIT cut as proposed by CREATE will be essential to economic recovery, he said, considering that MSMEs comprise 99 percent of local enterprises and employ almost 70 percent of the country’s workers.
On the other hand, he said, the necessary amendments to the FIA, RTLA and the PSA would immediately ease the restrictive economic rules for foreign businesses and thus encourage overseas investors to at once set up shop in the Philippines or expand their existing enterprises here.
The Joint Foreign Chambers of the Philippines (JFC) has also recommended the immediate enactment of other measures that also provide new FDI opportunities such as PSA and RTLA amendments, and programs that increase competitiveness to surpass levels of FDI achieved by the country’s neighbors.