Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said Thursday night around 85 percent of Filipino families will be covered by the government’s subsidy programs amounting to P256 billion to protect them from the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.
The state subsidies will cover 18 million poor and low-income households that survive mainly on the informal economy’s “no-work, no-pay” setup. This very large population segment, around 75 percent of all Filipino families, will get P205 billion in cash grants.
Dominguez said another 3.4 million workers in the formal sector employed in small businesses would receive wage subsidies amounting to P51 billion. He said these subsidy programs would cover a period of two months.
“We are about 24.6 million families all in all in the Philippines. So we are practically covering around 85 percent,” said Dominguez in response to a query on how many Filipinos are covered by the government’s emergency subsidy programs during Thursday night’s PTV4 public affairs program hosted by Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar.
“What are not covered are families whose members are working for large businesses, in particular the top 2,745 firms, and families whose members are working for the government, both national and local. They comprise the remaining 15 percent of families,” he said.
The government launched the Small Business Wage Subsidy program on April 16 covering 3.4 million employees who are not able to work as a result of the enhanced community quarantine in Luzon.
The wage subsidies to be given will range from P5,000 to P8,00 per month for a period of two months depending on the regions where the workers are employed.
“A few weeks ago, we began distributing the largest social program in the country’s history—a P205-billion social amelioration program for informal sector families,” Dominguez said.
“However, we also recognize that providing a lifeline to small businesses and their employees is critical to keeping the economy afloat,” he said.
Dominguez said that since March 2020, the government asked the private sector to help their workers but because small businesses have limited or no revenues during the quarantine, they do not have enough cash to pay for the salaries of their workers, rent, loan amortizations and other expenses.
The government mandated grace periods for rental payments and loans to ease the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals and businesses.
“Through this wage subsidy, we are now helping their employees, mostly from the lower middle class, meet their basic needs, like food and medicine. Second, and just as important, we are helping these employees keep their jobs. The Small Business Wage Subsidy is an integral part of a support package that we are rolling out for small businesses,” Dominguez said.
He said the two other components of the Small Business Relief Program are a proposed credit guarantee to enable micro, small and medium enterprises to access bank financing more easily and the proposed legislation for a longer net operating loss carryover of five years to help small businesses cope with their losses.