THE new leadership of the House of Representatives on Tuesday vowed to prioritize passage of the economic measures of the Duterte administration.
However, some lawmakers asked the new leadership to study the measures well, given the hard lessons from implementing the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law, the inflationary impact of which coincided with other factors that economic managers conceded they had underestimated, such as global oil prices rising and rice supply issues.
Former President and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was elected as the new House Speaker after getting a total of 184 votes and 12 abstentions on Monday.
“I am extremely honored to have been supported by my colleagues at the House of Representatives to be their new Speaker. I will endeavor to carry out the legislative agenda of President Rodrigo Duterte in the Lower House,” Arroyo said.
Arroyo is a member of the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban), the same party of President Duterte and the former Speaker, Davao del Norte Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez.
Atty. Raul Lambino, lawyer of Arroyo and vice president for International Affairs of the PDP-Laban, said the leadership of Arroyo is expected to pass all the economic measures of the Duterte administration this year.
“All the economic measures will be prioritized by [Speaker Arroyo] this year,” he said in an interview.
During his third State of the Nation Address (Sona), the President asked members of the 17th Congress to prioritize the passage of several economic measures to augment government coffers for the delivery of such social services.
The President sought urgent passage of rice tariffication, the second package of the tax-reform law, lowering of interconnection rates between telecommunications industry players, universal health care, end of contractualization, and environment protection.
Meanwhile, the AGRI Party-list echoed the President’s call to immediately pass the rice tariffication bill, which he had certified as urgent, as a long-term measure to lower the price of rice.
The President had said in his Sona that “we need to switch from the current quota system in importing rice to a tariff system where rice can be imported more freely. This will give us additional resources for our farmers, reduce the price of rice by up to P7 per kilo, and lower inflation significantly.”
House Bill 7735, or the “Revised Agricultural Tariffication Act,” is up for plenary debates in the House of Representatives.
“We believe that rice tariffication will not only lower rice prices; the revenue from the tariffs can be used to help farmers increase their productivity,” AGRI Party-list Secretary-General Benjie Martinez said.
The House Appropriations Committee chairman, Rep. Karlo Alexei B. Nograles of Davao, said the legislative agenda Duterte laid out in his Sona will be supported by the new House leadership.
“If we have the majority of the House of Representatives supporting a new Speaker, and the new Speaker is supportive of the present administration, then, [whatever it is the President said in his Sona], members of the House of Representatives will support,” Nograles said.
Nograles said a transition team has been formed to smoothen things out with former Speaker Alvarez. However, he declined to name the transition team members for now, as he is not at liberty to do so.
Alternative measures
Ifugao Rep. Teddy Baguilat, meanwhile, said the Duterte administration should look for alternative measures to collect more revenues.
“The poor have not yet recovered from the devastating effect of inflation brought by the TRAIN law and here comes the pitch for TRAIN 2,” Baguilat said. “It’s possible to raise again the excise taxes on mining and tobacco. However, not all of the tax provisions in the TRAIN 2 should be included as they would further burden the poor,” he added.
Package 2 of the TRAIN law seeks to lower the corporate income tax and rationalize fiscal incentives.
Albay Rep. Edcel C. Lagman said President Duterte had failed to address in his third Sona the “change” he promised the people during the presidential campaign.
“The people want economic reforms to arrest poverty. Yet the President insists on the full implementation of the TRAIN law, which has triggered the rise of inflation to 6.1 percent on food and nonalcoholic beverages, thus exacerbating food poverty, further reducing the people’s purchasing power, and decreasing the value of real wages,” Lagman added.
For his part, Akbayan Rep. Tom S. Villarin said “again, his promises to end contractualization, give the coco-levy trust fund to farmers, and other basic sector issues are good sound bytes but lack political will. He totally skirted the state of our economy, inflation, unemployment and rising debts.”