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Friday, March 29, 2024

Tax package gets more support

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MORE government officials have expressed their full support to the proposed Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion Act now pending in the Senate. 

Calling the measure as a win-win proposition, they said TRAIN would reform the country’s “outdated” tax system and at the same time help raise funds for the government’s infrastructure, health and education, and social protection programs.

The government executives include top officials from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, Budget Department, Health Department, Transportation Department, Energy Department, National Power Corp., Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board, and the National Economic and Development Authority. 

Director Rolando Toledo, who heads the DBM’s Fiscal Planning and Reforms Bureau, said the TRAIN “is a package that will be instrumental in the raising revenue effort and ultimately funding our development priorities for infrastructure and the social services which include health and education.”

The TRAIN, which is the first package of the Duterte administration’s Comprehensive Tax Reform Program, will also lead to a “simpler, fairer and more efficient tax regime” that will “invite more investments and put more money in the pockets of 99 percent of the population,” Toledo said at a recent hearing of the Senate ways and means committee.

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Director Reynaldo Cancio of Neda’s National Policy and Planning Staff, said with fiscal sustainability a key element in realizing the Duterte administration’s goal of lifting six million Filipinos out of poverty by 2022, the TRAIN would provide “the necessary resources for financing important investments in infrastructure, human capital and social protection.”

Bangko Sentral, represented by director Zeno Ronald Abenoja of the Department of Economic Research, said it was reiterating its position “in support of the comprehensive implementation of the tax reform program to raise the revenue base of the government and help refocus all the expenditures, including those for infrastructure and socioeconomic programs.”

“We think over the medium to long term, inflation would fall within the target range set by the national government in the next few years (of not more than 4 percent),” he added.

Kenneth Ronquillo, the director of the DoH Health Policy Development and Planning Bureau, said the department “fully supports the [TRAIN] as this will allow the government to intervene better in the health sector.”

“The Philippines lags behind Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nation) neighbors in terms of per-capita spending for health. We are at 6th in per-capita health expenditure in Asean, trailing behind Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam,” he said.

Transportation Assistant Secretary Mark Richmund de Leon said “the Department of Transportation fully supports this tax reform measure because this will fund the proposed ‘Build, Build, Build’ program of the Duterte government.”

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