Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said Wednesday the Duterte administration’s steadfast resolve to undertake further reforms to rebuild a strong and inclusive economy–and set the stage for a “sustainable, greener and healthier future” for the Filipino people–will enable the Philippines to thrive in the post-pandemic era.

Dominguez said among these reforms are improvements in the country’s information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure to expand the use of digital tools, enhance revenue collection performance and achieve greater financial inclusion for Filipinos.

The government should also pursue sustainable policies targeted towards bolstering the healthcare system and keeping a strong fiscal position to withstand future adversities, Dominguez said.

Dominguez underscored in an Asian Development Bank (ADB) event the need to intensify global collaboration and redefine the challenges that confront the world today as it reemerges from a debilitating COVID-19 pandemic, so that countries can be better prepared to deal with future outbreaks.

On the part of the Philippines, Dominguez expressed confidence in its capability to emerge stronger from the pandemic.

“We are very optimistic about the near future. That optimism is based on our willingness to undertake the reforms necessary to rebuild a strong and inclusive economy that thrives in the 21st century. We are also doing our utmost to provide a sustainable, greener, and healthier future for our Filipino people,” said Dominguez in his keynote address at the opening plenary of the ADB-hosted Southeast Asia Development Symposium (SEADS).

Infrastructure modernization through President Duterte’s signature program “Build, Build, Build” will remain the cornerstone of the Philippines’ recovery plan, complemented by tax reform and other economic stimulus measures for businesses, and investor-friendly legislation being pushed by his economic team in the Congress, said Dominguez, the governor of the Philippines in the ADB.

The virtual SEADS led by ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa was expected to gather over 3,000 participants from ADB’s member-economies and partner-institutions during the two-day gathering.

With the theme “Innovation through Collaboration: Planning for Inclusive Post-COVID-19 Recovery,” the ADB said SEADS will provide governments in Southeast Asia “with a unique opportunity to interact directly with each other, and with leaders from industry, academia, and the development sector, to discuss innovative approaches and solutions to the COVID-19 crisis and other development challenges.”

Dominguez noted that despite supply challenges, most countries–including the Philippines–have begun rolling out their vaccination programs, a development that has “inspired market optimism” and “a sense that the worst is over and our economies can be fully functional in a matter of months.”

“The availability of vaccines, however, should not lead us to neglect equally urgent concerns. We still need to do the tough things we must undertake to cope with the severe weather conditions induced by global warming or with the possible emergence of new viruses,” he said.

Dominguez said the Philippines will strive to ensure the sustainable growth of its economy over the long term by adopting climate-resilient and adaptation strategies, knowing fully well that unlike COVID-19, for which vaccines have been produced in a matter of months, there is no quick solution to the climate crisis.

“We need to act now with the same sense of urgency that we have for the ongoing pandemic,” he said.

Dominguez, who is chairperson-designate of the Climate Change Commission (CCC), reiterated his strong push for a legislative measure that will ban single-use plastics as a way to jumpstart the country’s fight against climate change and encourage all Filipinos to do their part in helping save the environment on a daily basis.

Learning from the Philippine experience in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, Dominguez said this global health crisis exposed the country’s weaknesses in providing emergency aid to low-income families as it does not have a national ID system in place to speed up the delivery of cash assistance to the intended beneficiaries.

While the pandemic experience showed the need to accelerate the rollout of a unified national ID database, Dominguez said it also taught the government to adapt quickly by embracing a digital-only mindset, which was what happened with the successful implementation by the Department of Finance (DOF), Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and Social Security System (SSS) of the Small Business Wage Subsidy (SBWS) Program for displaced workers in small businesses.

The limitations forced by the pandemic also underscored the importance of rapidly upgrading the country’s digital financial transaction systems, including the use of electronic means to improve tax collection performance, which resulted to revenue agencies overshooting their respective adjusted collection targets in 2020, he said.

He said digital tools to broaden financial inclusion were also launched amid the pandemic, among them the Digital PERA (Personal Equity Retirement Account) and the Bonds.PH mobile application for the country’s domestic bond offerings.

Dominguez said that amid these developments, the government came financially ready to meet the challenges of the pandemic, given the President’s policy of fiscal prudence and discipline, and the implementation of his Comprehensive Tax Reform Program (CTRP).

“From a fiscal standpoint, the health crisis and the economic contraction it precipitated posed a most difficult challenge. The crisis meant additional unplanned spending. The economic downturn meant a reduction in revenue flows to the government. Despite all these, we did not abandon the judicious financial management set by President Duterte when he assumed office,” Dominguez said.

“Through the darkest times of the pandemic last year, we were never under the illusion that this challenge would be short. We were prepared to fight a long battle, exercising prudence over the use of our fiscal resources. The worst we could have done was to run out of water before the fire went out,” he said.

As the Philippines begins to recover from the COVID-19 crisis, Dominguez said the government will remain focused on reforms to foster the revival of enterprises and restore consumer activity.

These pending reforms include the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises Act (CREATE), which is the biggest stimulus program ever for businesses in the form of hefty reductions in corporate income taxes and other benefits to aid in their recovery, Dominguez said.

The Financial Institutions Strategic Transfer (FIST) law, on the other hand, will allow banks to efficiently offload their soured loans and non-performing assets (NPAs) so that they can extend more credit to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in need of assistance.

Dominguez said the Duterte administration is also pushing the congressional passage of the Government Financial Institutions Unified Initiatives to Distressed Enterprises for Economic Recovery (GUIDE) bill to help save strategically important companies by aiding them to address their solvency issues, along with the final packages of the CTRP on improving property valuation and simplifying the tax system on passive income and financial intermediaries.

To further open up the economy and bring in foreign investments, the Congress should also pass doable reforms such as the amendments to the Foreign Investment Act, the Public Service Act, and the Retail Trade Liberalization Act, Dominguez said.

“We also aim to take full advantage of the demographic sweet spot the Philippines enjoys. A much younger population profile means we will have the workforce ready for rapid growth. We have invested heavily in our human capital and hope to reap the rewards further down the road,” he added.

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