PH-US at 75: Strengthening ties through sustainable recovery

(Remarks were delivered at a virtual economic briefing for senior executives of Philippine companies in the US and American companies in the Philippines and Philippine and US officials on April 15, 2021.)

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Vaccination rollout

The Philippines strongly supports the statement of Mr. David Malpass, former US undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs and now the World Bank president, who underscored the importance of releasing Covid-19 vaccines from countries with excess supplies as soon as possible.

Despite supply challenges, we are fully rolling out our vaccination program. Our target is to inoculate at least 70 million Filipinos or 100 percent of our adult population within the year. We have arranged for the delivery of more than 140 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines this year. About 15 percent will be delivered in the first half of the year and 85 percent in the second half.

Much of the financing needed for the vaccination program was sourced through loans from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. We chose this financing strategy because we want to assure the public of two things: First, that the vaccines we are buying are internationally accepted, and have passed the stringent criteria for safety and effectiveness. Second, that the vaccine procurement is totally transparent.

I would also like to point out that the trilateral cooperation among the three multilateral banks in support of the Philippines’ vaccination program is a first in the Asean region.

Meanwhile, we have ample political will and capital that we will judiciously use until the end of the President’s term. We are looking forward to the passage of the remaining tax reform packages.

Package 3 will make our property valuation system at par with international standards. Package 4 aims to simplify the taxation of passive income and financial services and transactions by reducing the number of combinations of tax bases and rates from 80 to about 40.

To fully liberalize the Philippine economy, we will continue to push for the amendments to the Foreign Investments Act, the Public Service Act, and the Retail Trade Liberalization Act. The President has certified these three bills as urgent.

The move will help speed up the approval of these measures within the President’s term.

We will also continue the ongoing digital reforms in our revenue agencies to ensure that they match the efficiencies of the best comparable institutions worldwide. In our digitalization efforts, we give primacy to our close collaboration with the private sector.

Our highly talented, tech-savvy, and young workforce is our key asset. We are investing heavily in training young Filipinos to be more competitive in the new global economy.

In addition, we are staunchly committed to adhere to the targets set by the Paris Agreement on climate change action. We are pushing for a bill that would ban single-use plastics to make sure that every Filipino will do his or her part on a daily basis to help save the world’s environment. We also want to pursue investments in green technologies and clean energy. I am sure that there are many areas where we can cooperate on these initiatives.

We are fully determined to restore the vigor of the Philippine economy at the soonest possible time. Even with the unprecedented crisis, the Duterte administration will continue to work hard until the last minute of its term to undertake the reforms we had set out to do in our zero-to-ten-point socioeconomic agenda.

We will make sure that these measures will be irreversible and will form the foundation of an inclusive, sustainable and investment-driven economy for the Filipino people.