Taguig City Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano on Saturday reiterated his call for a two-pronged approach to address the country’s record-high inflation.
Cayetano, who is running for senator in the May 9 election, hinted that reigning in inflation would involve suspension of excise taxes on fuel and mandating a five-percent savings across all government agencies to make up for the ensuing revenue shortfall.
“The focus right now should be on mitigating rising fuel prices to contain potential runaway inflation, which hit a six-month high of four percent in March,” Cayetano said.
He also said the runaway prices of fuel cause a domino effect on all other commodities.
To enable the government to withstand the loss of revenue from suspended fuel excise taxes, Cayetano called for the imposition of a mandatory savings of five percent among all state agencies to free up P250 billion out of the P5.04-trillion national budget for 2022.
Cayetano said any attempt to address inflation through the suspension of taxes would provide insufficient relief to vulnerable sectors such as transportation and agriculture without some form of financial assistance.
Cayetano and his allies in Congress filed House Bill 10832 or the Mandatory Savings Bill on March 31, 2022 which proposes a five percent mandatory savings to generate a projected amount of P250 billion “to fund assistance to our countrymen who are in dire need to recover from the adverse effects of the present pandemic.”
He also previously urged Congress to adopt the 10K Ayuda Bill which would require the government to provide a minimum cash grant of
P10,000 to every Filipino family to help them recover from the adverse economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The former Speaker noted that Thailand implemented price controls on food and medicines in the 1980s amid runaway inflation partly caused by the effects of the 1979 global energy crisis, as well as other domestic factors.