Camarines Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte is appealing to President Duterte to certify as urgent the nearly year-old measure designed to boost investments, create jobs and drive strong growth outside the metropolis—to finally, end the country’s traditional overreliance on Greater Manila as its main engine of economic growth and development.
Villafuerte said the presidential endorsement of House Bill (HB) No. 6970, which sets up a national action plan (NAP) for President Duterte’s Balik Probinsya, Bagong Pagasa (BP2) program, will complement the recent presidential endorsement for urgent congressional approval of three pending bills geared to increase foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to the country.
Last year, the country’s largest business organization with a membership of 35,000 small, medium and large enterprises nationwide gave its full backing to the President’s BP2 initiative, as it endorsed Villafuerte’s HB 6970 on township revitalization amid the drawn-out coronavirus pandemic.
These three investor-friendly measures endorsed last week as urgent bills by President Duterte are those proposing amendments to the Foreign Investments Act (FIA), Public Service Act (PSA) and the Retail Trade Liberalization Act (RTLA).
The former Camarines Sur governor at the same time called on the House leadership to help accelerate the country’s recovery from the pandemic-induced global economic shock by taking swift action on HB 6970, “instead of squandering the chamber’s time and energy on the counterproductive and highly divisive Charter Change (Cha-Cha) initiative—Resolution of Both Houses (RBH) No. 2—being spearheaded by Speaker Lord Allan Velasco.”
“On top of finally decongesting Metro Manila and neighboring urban centers, putting President Duterte’s Balik Probinsya (BP2) program on the fast track via HB 6970 will encourage investors to set up shop in, or expand their present businesses in Greater Manila to, the regions,” said Villafuerte, “thereby leading at last to a genuine and vibrant countryside or rural development.”
Last year, the country’s largest business organization with a membership of 35,000 small, medium and large enterprises nationwide gave its full backing to the President’s BP2 initiative, as it endorsed Villafuerte’s HB 6970 on township revitalization amid the drawn-out coronavirus pandemic.
In a letter sent to President Duterte, the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) president Ambassador Benedicto Yujuico and former GMA-7 president-CEO Menardo Jimenez, who chairs PCCI’s Balik Probinsya program said “we all the more must intensify the Balik Probinsya effort,” as it cited “the timeliness and are fully supportive of a bill filed in Congress by (Congressman) Villafuerte, which will provide the basis for ensuring the sustainability of this program.”
In presenting a menu of incentives to foreign and local corporations to invest and create employment outside Greater Manila, Villafuerte said “HB 6970 will put flesh into the BP2 program that President Duterte established last year in the hope of stimulating economic activity and creating quality jobs in the provinces that would expectantly encourage urban workers to return to their home provinces or fresh college graduates and the unemployed to stay put and seek livelihood opportunities in their respective localities.”
Villafuerte, who filed HB 6970 last June, said this Balik Probinsya measure and the three investor-friendly bills—PSA, FIA and RTLA—are actually “complementary” in nature as all four proposals aim to make the Philippines a magnet for investments.
“The approval of these four measures will have the effect of funneling business capital into cities and municipalities outside the National Capital Region (NCR) and its adjacent provinces where economic activity and investments have been concentrated for decades,” he said.
Greater Manila refers to the NCR or Metro Manila and its nearby provinces, including Bulacan on the north and the Calabarzon (Cavite-Laguna-Batangas-Rizal-Quezon) subregion on the east and south.
Villafuerte said the downside of the country’s continuing overdependence on Greater Manila for its growth and development has been highlighted anew in the huge economic repercussions of the recent move by the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) to reimpose the strict enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) for two weeks in the so-called “NCR Plus” bubble comprising Metro Manila, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal.
As pointed out by Trade and Industry Secretary Ramon Lopez, the country lost P180 billion in revenues in the so-called “NCR Plus”—comprising Metro Manila, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna and Rizal—from the two-week ECQ that shaved 1% off the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) of P18 trillion.
Villafuerte filed HB 6970 almost a year ago after President Duterte’s issued Executive Order (EO) No. 114, mandating a multisectoral comprehensive program to decongest NCR and encourage Filipino workers here and abroad to go back to their home regions and live—and work—there for good.
Villafuerte said the strict lockdowns in response to the latest coronavirus surge exacted such a huge financial toll on the country because over half the domestic economy is accounted for by NCR and Calabarzon.
Citing Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data, he bared that Metro Manila and Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, and Quezon) account for 36% and 17%, respectively, of the economy.
“Hence, we need to deal with too much economic dependence on Greater Manila to prevent the metropolis from choking the Philippine economy in future disruptions similar to the on-and-off mobility restrictions that have been imposed to contain the lingering pandemic,” he said. “And the best way to make this happen is for Government to generate greater economic activity elsewhere in the country and encourage more businesses to set up shop in the regions.”
Villafuerte had backed the three pro-investor bills certified by the President as urgent measures after Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III and Secretary Lopez endorsed them during a January hearing of the House committee on constitutional amendments on RBH 2, which aims to relax the constitutional restrictions on foreign participation in certain businesses.
The Camarines Sur solon agreed with Dominguez that the three bills are “doable” reforms that the Congress can pass this year, and said their congressional approval make up the faster, more pragmatic route to relaxing economic restrictions on foreign corporations, in lieu of Cha-Cha by way of RHB 2 that appears “dead in the water” anyway in the Senate.
As for HB 6970, Villafuerte said this will fast-track the implementation of the President’s BP2 program because it proposes township revitalization programs nationwide in an effort to finally decongest Metro Manila and create more jobs and self-employment opportunities in rural communities amid the coronavirus pandemic.
With HB 6970, Villafuerte is banking on public investments and incentives as the linchpin of a two-pronged approach to encourage people who have migrated to the heavily congested NCR to return to their home provinces, and for those who have opted to stay put in their cities or municipalities to remain there instead of relocating to Metro Manila in search of jobs or better livelihood opportunities.
HB 6970 provides for a “comprehensive, multi-sectoral planning and a mix of top-down and bottom-up policy interventions that will channel public investment and create incentives for growth in the countryside” by encouraging businesses to relocate or expand to rural areas.
The bill aims to do this, he said, by offering a slew of government come-ons such as tax breaks; incentives for relocation and creation of new jobs; and low-interest loans and financial aid for investors who will engage in rural industrialization.
Villafuerte said the flip side of urban congestion has come to the fore amid the pandemic, as Metro Manila, which is the world’s 15th most densely populated city—according to data from the CityMayorsStatistics, a global source for urban statistics—easily became Covid-19’s epicenter in the country, accounting lately for almost half of all coronavirus infections.
Villafuerte filed HB 6970 almost a year ago after President Duterte’s issued Executive Order (EO) No. 114, mandating a multisectoral comprehensive program to decongest NCR and encourage Filipino workers here and abroad to go back to their home regions and live—and work—there for good.
EO 114 was issued on May 6, 2020, following the President’s endorsement of this back-to-the-provinces program when Sen. Christopher Lawrence Go spoke about it during one of the President’s televised public addresses.
“Encouraging Metro Manila-based workers to return to their home provinces against the backdrop of the pandemic will only become an effective strategy to decongest the metropolis and spur genuine rural growth and development if Government will provide the essential physical and social infrastructure, tax incentives and other financial assistance not only to entice Filipinos to make an exodus to the countryside but also encourage those residing in their provinces to stay put,” Villafuerte said.
Dubbed the Balik Probinsya Act of 2020, HB 6970 aims to establish a NAP whose main goal is to make permanent public investments and incentives meant to “steer the dispersal of economic activity from Metro Manila to the Philippine countryside.”
Although there had been past government attempts to decongest NCR and create more jobs and livelihood opportunities in the provinces, Villafuerte said that none actually succeeded in the absence of a multisectoral program anchored on public investments and incentives.
He explained that this two-pronged approach of public investments and incentives for countryside or regional development had been the catalyst for successful programs to create townships and transform rural communities into new growth areas in the United States and Europe.