The Duterte administration’s comprehensive tax reform program and its blueprint for peace and development in Mindanao are among the priority initiatives that would be tackled in the upcoming Philippines Development Forum (PDF) in Davao City that aims to forge collective action from various stakeholders on how to vigorously implement the government’s 10-point socioeconomic agenda.

This multisectoral dialogue, the first under the Duterte administration, will gather inputs from stakeholders from the public and private sectors, as well as from the country’s foreign development partners, on how to best implement the government’s reform agenda to make sure it would significantly cut poverty incidence and make high growth not only sustainable but also felt by all Filipinos.

Set on Nov. 8-9 at this consultative forum will be held at the SMX Convention Center in Lanang, Davao City, with Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, the chairperson of the event, delivering the welcome remarks at the opening session.

Secretary Jesus Dureza of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, who is the forum’s co-chairpersom, will give the opening statement before the start of the PDF plenary session that will be led by members of the Duterte Cabinet.

After the opening and plenary sessions, the participants will be grouped into several “breakout” sessions that will discuss the Philippines’ (1) macroeconomic and fiscal policies, including the DOF’s proposed tax reform program, and (2) its peace and development initiatives in Mindanao, among other topics.

The breakout sessions will also tackle strategies on (3) improving Philippine infrastructure and competitiveness, including the development of science and technology, building an efficient transport network and improving the ease of doing business.

Other topics like (4) rural development, including land administration and management and food security; and (5) the development of human capital, including social protection programs for the poorest of the poor and the implementation of the reproductive health law, will also be covered by separate breakout sessions.

The Department of Finance (DOF) is working on a Comprehensive Tax Reform Program to help ensure the financial sustainability of the new government’s accelerated spending on infrastructure, human capital and social protection, as a way to realize the primary goal of the 10-point socioeconomic agenda, which is to drastically reduce poverty on the Duterte watch.

The DOF has already submitted to the Congress the first package of this tax plan, which includes cuts in personal income taxes primarily for the benefit of wage earners and other low-income Filipinos, along with measures to offset the projected revenue losses from the lower tax rates, like adjusting the fuel excise tax and automobile tax, and broadening the Value Added Tax (VAT) base by removing certain exemptions.

Through the comprehensive tax plan, the DOF aims to set the ground for Government to spend an extra P1 trillion per year on infrastructure, human capital and social protection, so it can meet the President’s vision of transforming the Philippines into an upper middle-income economy by the end of his term in 2022 and into a high income economy in one generation or by 2040.

Chaired by the DOF, the PDF serves as the primary mechanism for facilitating policy dialogues among all stakeholders, including the national government and local government units (LGUs), business sector, the development partner community, the academe and civil society organization, on the Government’s development agenda.

The inputs gathered from the various stakeholders will be incorporated into the Philippines Development Plan (PDP) 2017-2022 currently being completed by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA).

Dominguez earlier said the forum offers business groups and other organizations such as the Makati Business Club the opportunity to take part in the consultative dialogue and air their views on how best to sustain and achieve inclusive growth.

He said the Philippines’ development partners like the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank plus other global financial institutions, along with civil society groups and representatives of foreign governments, are also invited to participate in the two-day forum.

“The Department of Finance is holding a Philippine Development Forum in Davao City onNovember 8 and 9 and I would like to invite all these groups to participate in the forum because there they can air their concerns and we can discuss the future direction of our country,” Dominguez said.

“In this forum….we can all discuss with the international and the local community the direction of the Philippine economy,” he said.

The last PDF formal meeting was held in February 2013, also in Davao City, with around 300 participants from government, international development partners, and other stakeholders.

Davao City was also the venue for the “Sulong Pilipinas Tungo sa Kaunlaran” consultative workshop organized by then-incoming Secretary Dominguez last June, ahead of the formal assumption to the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte.

Sulong Pilipinas was held on June 20-21, also at the SMX Lanang, to help the new Administration draw up the correct metrics or standards to later on measure whether Government has been meeting its socioeconomic targets and whether such have been truly beneficial to poor and low-income families.

Dominguez has welcomed the decline in poverty incidence to 21.6 percent, saying this is the cue for the government to “work doubly hard” on its 10-point socioeconomic agenda to hit President Duterte’s target of reducing the number of poor Filipinos by 1.5 percent of the population annually over the next six years.

He said that slashing the poverty rate from almost 22 percent to just 13 percent by 2022 remains “doable,” but it will require “the Duterte administration to work doubly hard on fleshing out programs of the 10-point socioeconomic agenda that would boost growth and generate enough jobs and livelihood opportunities nationwide as a way to raise incomes for the poor to meet their food and non-food needs. At the same time, food prices need to be managed so that it does not eat up income growth.”

“A drastic reduction in the country’s poverty incidence as envisioned by the President has become more challenging, as this will require improving the living standards of the poorest-of-the-poor families instead of just uplifting the lives of those on the fringes of the poverty line,” said Dominguez in reaction to the latest Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) released last week by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) pointing to the decline in the poverty rate from 26.3 percent in 2009 to last year’s 21.6 percent.

“The government’s focus should be on the countryside as the severely poor are mostly in rural areas,” said Dominguez, who once served as agriculture secretary.

“This also means that we have to pursue tax reforms in the Congress without letup,” he said, “so the Duterte administration can generate enough revenues to bankroll both the pro-poor and business-friendly programs of the 10-point socioeconomic agenda on inclusive growth.”

Dominguez said the DOF will study the 2015 FIES of the PSA to see if it needs to finetune the figures in its Comprehensive Tax Reform Program, the first package of which was already submitted to both legislative chambers last September.

The past government has managed to improve the lives of the marginal poor by way of projects like the Pantawid ng Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), a conditional cash transfer (CCT) initiative in which poor families are given cash in exchange for meeting certain conditions like sending their kids to school and getting medical check-ups at barangay health centers.

Finance Undersecretary Karl Kendrick Chua, the DOF’s chief economist, echoed Dominguez’s view that reducing the poverty incidence from 22 percent to 13 percent is “doable but more challenging as it is easier to uplift those near the poverty line, which the previous government did than those who are severely poor, which is the task of the Duterte government.”