DAVAO CITY—More assistance to agriculture to improve farmers’ income and access to education by poor Filipinos are among the demands sought from the government so that more disadvantaged Filipinos could feel the benefits of an improving economy.
These were among the demands in a list by the Department of Finance (DOF) at the conclusion of government-organized dialogues with businesses and private sector representatives across the country last month.
Other demands include improving agricultural output, simplifying loan requirements for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), enhancing peace and order measures, and stricter profiling of the beneficiaries in the conditional cash transfer program.
Improving agricultural productivity and raising farmers’ incomes through education, and the use of new farm technologies emerged as top actionable recommendation from the private sector. According to the DOF, the other top demands include the following: the need to build more physical infrastructure such as seaports, airports and mass-based transport systems, and simplifying requirements for loans with reasonable interest rates for SMEs and the rural sector.
The other top “actionable recommendations” the DOF gathered nationwide include: improving access to education, especially for the poor (ranked No. 4); implementing stricter profiling of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) recipients, monitoring their expenses and providing them livelihood training (ranked No. 5); and speeding up the processing and issuance by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of licenses and certificates of product registration (ranked No. 6).
Ranked No. 7 actionable recommendation is properly planning infrastructure projects to reduce disruptions in business operations, while ranked No. 8 is simplifying processes at the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR). Improving peace and order by ensuring police and military visibility in rural areas, intensively monitoring illegal trade activities in coastal areas and continuing the implementation of martial law in Mindanao were ranked No. 9 and No. 10, respectively.
The rest of the recommendations were: improving health services in every part of the country by building more health centers and hospitals, which will help decongest district hospitals; providing tax incentives to MSMEs; and streamlining government processes and reducing red tape.
Finance Assistant Secretary Antonio Joselito G. Lambino II said several of the top actionable recommendations for this year are already being implemented and would continue to be improved by the government.
Moves such as simplifying BIR processes and reducing red tape would be enhanced by implementing the Ease of Doing Business (EODB) law and by building more physical infrastructure via the “Build, Build, Build” program and enhancing peace and order, according to Lambino.
“The rest of the recommendations would be thoroughly studied and acted upon with as much seriousness as we have done in the past,” Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III told reporters here at the end of the Davao City leg of the conference called “Sulong Pilipinas” on Wednesday.
The other regional workshops were conducted in Cebu City, San Fernando City in La Union and Clark Freeport Zone in Pampanga, and Davao City.
Dominguez told participants at the Clark and Davao “Sulong” workshops that the Duterte administration has delivered on several key recommendations made two years ago by the private sector to help the government sustain high and inclusive growth, notably on improving the ease of doing business, implementing a national identification (ID) system and instituting tax reform. He said the government has responded to the call of the business sector to modernize the country’s infrastructure and logistics network with its ambitious Build, Build, Build program.
These first set of recommendations were fleshed out by leaders of the business community during the first-ever “Sulong Pilipinas” consultative conference in Davao City in June 2016.
Dominguez said improving connectivity and upgrading the logistics backbone has spurred growth, with the government spending P571 billion in the first nine months of 2018 alone on infrastructure. The amount was 7.2 percent above target and 46 percent higher than the amount spent in the same period last year, he added.