Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III has said that the new government will carry out a wide gamut of initiatives ranging from an infrastructure buildup and tax reform to easing traffic congestion and enhancing the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) program, in step with President Duterte’s 10-point socioeconomic agenda that aims to make all Filipinos benefit from the country’s growth streak.
Dominguez said that delivering progress for all over the next six years is the only way for Government to arrest the public disenchantment that had propelled Mr. Duterte to the presidency, arising from the majority’s belief that they have yet to reap the fruits of high growth in recent years.
At a recentforum organized by the Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) at the RCBC Plaza in Makati City, Dominguez said proposals such as the grant of special powers to the President to deal with the traffic situation would be considered to ease Metro Manila’s chronic congestion that has stymied growth and turned off investors.
“We intend to take the traffic crisis by the horns not only because of the grave economic costs of congestion but also because of its adverse effects on the health and quality of life of our labor force,” he said.
Talking to almost 200 of the country’s leaders, including former President Ramos and former Prime Minister Cesar Virata, Dominguez said during the RCBC event that the Duterte administration aims to address the short-term economic concerns of the country while looking far ahead to build an economy that is fairer to the Filipino people.
“Both the short-term goals and the longer-term strategies must cohere and deliver palpable results,” he said. “Otherwise, we could reap more profound disenchantment.”
As part of its 10-point socioeconomic agenda, the Duterte administration would revolutionize Philippine agriculture to raise rural productivity and also pour massive public investments into human capital to improve the country’s educational system and widen public access to health services, he said.
“We seek to rapidly decentralize our economy, improve the productivity of our agriculture and temper the population growth rate,” he said. “The front-loading of our infra investments intends precisely to achieve the more strategic goals of dispersing economic opportunities, improving our nation’s logistical backbone and meeting the employment needs of our young population.”
Dominguez said the new administration would also enhance the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) program, and would be open to unsolicited proposals and ideas from the private sector to better stimulate the economy and further create jobs, especially for young Filipinos.
“I assure you that both the concept and the execution of the PPP program will be dramatically reviewed,” he said. “This should only secondarily be a tool for raising revenues.”
“This is first and foremost an opportunity to bring private sector participation in nation-building,” he said. “The PPP program will, in the new dispensation, no longer be merely a PowerPoint presentation.”
In a two-day consultation meeting last week in Davao City, over 450 leaders of the business community welcomed initiatives towards improving capitalization of the country’s agriculture sector, integrating farm systems in a novel way to produce a higher value of crops, and making farming more economically rewarding.
One concrete suggestion of the business leaders who took part in the Davao meeting was to establish a national ID system to properly target public services and subsidies, he said.
Dominguez said the past administration had lavishly funded a conditional cash transfer program but had been basically blind because there were no means to specifically target such assistance.
