Massive infrastructure program, tax reduction and considerable employment program will be the primary focus of the Binay presidency.
Vice President Jejomar Binay said that the first tasks of his administration if he wins in the 2016 polls are to bring tax relief to the Filipino people by revising tax rates to account for current inflation rates, resolve the infrastructure gap, and address poverty.
“Tax relief will restore purchasing power to the working class and expand demand in the local economy. This will reduce pressure for raising wages that will make the entire economy uncompetitive,” Binay said in his speech at the Philippine Business Conference.
“Being an archipelagic country, we need to evolve an efficient logistics system so that island economies are not stranded from the mainstream, a comprehensive national transport system, including modern ports, airports and rail systems to move products cheaply and disperse economic activity and more modern road system delivering farm products to the markets more efficiently,” Binay said.
“It will enable our companies to operate more efficiently to compete in an open regional market. It will unlock the potential of our agricultural sector and help bring down our excessively high food price regime. That will create jobs and reduce poverty,” he added.
“The corporate tax rate should likewise be reduced to be at par with the rest of the region. This, by far, will serve as the best incentive for investments in our economy. The increased investments will offset the initial loss in revenue,” he added.
Binay said both the adjustment in individual tax rates and reduction of excessive corporate tax rates will not amount to half the potential revenues lost to rampant smuggling and a mere pittance to over P500 billion underspent funds idly stacked in state coffers.
“This will increase the competitiveness of Filipino businesses. It will ease the traffic congestion that wastes billions in economic potential each day. It will revive our exports. It will resurrect our agriculture. It will create more jobs and disperse economic activity,” he further said.
For the business process outsourcing and related sectors, Binay said he will establish a Department of Information and Communications Technology. This will outline the program towards growing industries related to information technology.
“We will also widen the reach of cell sites with the help of the private sector and FDIs [foreign direct investments]. ‘No network coverage’ will be a thing of the past,” he said. “If the Internet connection in the future country is fast and reliable, it will certainly lead to development for our country. More people from the provinces will be able to get jobs using the Internet like transcribers, artists, accountants, and designers.”
Moreover, Binay talked of “reorganizing governance,” including enhanced devolution and greater share of the Internal Revenue Allotment to poor municipalities.
“The more devolved decision-making is, the more responsive it will be. The more empowered local government units are, the more accountable they become. Presidents may no longer behave like emperors, impervious to the views of the grassroots. Local executives should no longer be vassals of a distant potentate,” he said.
“We will gather all local economic councils to strengthen the coordination of production. We will widen the model of one town, one product and ensure that there is sufficient funding for production as well as ensure that there will be buyers of the products. If there are more suppliers, the manufacturing and export sectors would grow stronger,” he added.
Binay said a government can only be responsive “if citizens are empowered in the political sphere.”
“If ordinary citizens are not assertive, it is the natural tendency of government to be callous. If the poor are not empowered, the oligarchy will persist,” he said.
He said a change in leadership and in the structures hindering rapid development are key to stopping the “paradox” afflicting the Philippine economy, as he described the Aquino years as “a period of lost opportunities.”
“The Philippine economy, over the past few years, has been a paradox. We have posted a rather respectable GDP growth rate but our poverty rate has worsened rather than improved. We have experienced a property boom, but the housing backlog worsened. Some of our best companies generated good profit, but local business conditions did not lead to a healthy reinvested rate. To the contrary, our best companies decided to invest abroad,” he said.
“The present administration should not claim sole credit for the growth in the past few years given the growth momentum and trajectory since the 1990s. More than the rhetorical daang matuwid, reforms done by previous administrations and favorable externalities were credited by independent analysts as critical in promoting growth. The country’s growth could in fact have been more robust if the economic management were better,” he said.