OFFICIALS of the Department of Finance and National Economic Development Authority are not keen on readily endorsing passage by Congress of a new law creating a so-called “Special Defense Economic Zone (SpeDEZ) inside the government arsenal defense industrial estate” at Camp Gen. Antonio Luna in Limay, Bataan.
DOF and NEDA officials conveyed their positions during Tuesday’s Senate Economic Affairs Committee hearing, chaired by Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, on House Bill 6525 sponsored by Bataan Rep. Jose Enrique Garcia III.
DOF tax specialist Miriam Tassara reminded lawmakers that at least six eco zones are “already existing in Bataan.”
She raised concern on the plan to “convert an arsenal into an eco zone” whose main production will be sold to the Armed Forces and the Philippine National Police.
“We do not see the need for (such an) eco zone with tax incentives,” the DOF official told the Gatchalian committee, noting that eco zones are “put up for competitiveness.”
She added that Rep. Garcia’s proposed eco zone is being put up to supply AFP-PNP requirements, which could be done by annual budgetary allocations. “That is why we do not support the bill as proposed,” the DOF official told the committee.
“We have other reforms and fiscal incentives under way,” Tassara said even as she noted that the DOF’s stand remains consistent: that so-called economic zones should be under the Philippine Economic Zone Authority. “A new eco zone should be under that same law.”
Rep. Garcia countered, however, that “what is being [proposed to be] converted as an eco zone is the area outside the 70-hectare arsenal” in Camp Luna. “We need foreign investors to come in,” he added, ” we cannot rely on local locators.”
Garcia told Gatchalian’s committee that “eco zones are no longer export oriented; they are no longer the export processing zone as we know it.”
At the same time, Gatchalian’s committee was informed that the NEDA also has misgivings on the inclusion of an arsenal in the proposed eco zone.