The Duterte administration was prodded on Thursday to take the lead in buying “Pinoy-made” personal protective equipment (PPE) and other Covid-related needs to help boost the country’s economy on its way to recovery.
“Crisis is opportunity,” said Sen. Francis Pangilinan, even as he struck an upbeat note on the country’s economic recovery from the contagion. “We could still recover economically, generate jobs if we patronize the products made by our own countrymen,” he said in Filipino.
Pangilinan projected an upbeat bounce back note in the wake of reports over 3,500 workers of local PPE manufacturers have been laid off due to lack of demand.
“There is a demand for PPEs,” he said, adding, there’s a local demand for PPE, which local manufacturers could meet.
He urged consumers earlier to buy local products as a sure-fire formula. “I would like to reiterate my previous pronouncement to buy locally made products to fuel the recovery of the economy,” said the author of Senate Bill 1759, or the Pandemic Protection Act.
The senator recalled filing last August 2020 the proposed measure which seeks to exempt from taxes on the importation of needed materials for the production of PPE to help lower the cost of production. It also seeks to exempt the local sales of Covid-response critical products and services from value-added tax.
At a Senate hearing last week, members of the Confederation of Wearable Exporters of the Philippines (Conwep) told senators they had to lay off as much as 3,500 workers in repurposed factories in December 2020.
This, after the Confederation of Philippine Manufacturers of PPE (CPMP) responded to the government’s call in March 2020 to reconfigure their facilities to be able to produce medical-grade PPEs locally.
According to CPMP, local suppliers were not maximized in the government’s comprehensive procurement program when they joined in November to December 2020.
Only 27 percent of the government’s monthly demand for cover-alls and gowns, and 69 percent of the monthly mask capacity were granted to local suppliers and were already delivered in January and February 2021, the senator noted, adding, “only P660 million worth of PPE were purchased by the government locally, according to CPMP.”
He added that investments to upgrade local production of PPEs were as much as P1.7 billion, with the industry continuing to incur losses at present.