Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte has called on local government executives to put up their own “green lanes” to streamline and expedite the processing of business permits in their respective localities.
Villafuerte, president of the National Unity Party, made the statement as President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. took another step to level up the ease of doing business (EODB) nationwide—and eventually turn the Philippines into a premier investment hub in the region.
Villafuerte, a former governor and incumbent congressman representing Camarines Sur’s second district, made this appeal to local executives as he lauded the President’s kick-off last week of a project establishing business-friendlier “green lanes for strategic investments” in national government (NG) offices and LGUs to simplify and speed up the processing of strategic investment inflows across the country.
“The President’s July 13 launch of ‘green lanes’ to clear the way to the fast-track processing of strategic investments couldn’t have come at a better time, as he has just signed the law establishing the MIF (Maharlika Investment Fund or Republic Act 11954) as an alternative stream for investment funds amid government expectations of at least $88 million or almost P5 billion in investment inflows for the rest of this year, representing our initial windfall from the President’s 12 official trips abroad since he took office last year,” the lawmaker said.
Villafuerte noted that the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) expects, from the President’s foreign trips, an initial $88 million worth of investment leads this year in the manufacturing, renewable energy (RE) and information technology and business process management (IT-BPM) industries that would create 17,800 jobs combined.
This amount is part of the DTI-listed pipeline of an estimated $70 billion in investment pledges from the United States (US), Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, China, Thailand, Europe and other countries that are the fruits of the government’s pro-business agenda and “the President’s relentless economic-diplomacy drive to sell the Philippines as a robust economy that has reopened fully after the pandemic and continues to reform its regulatory environment to make it a more conducive destination in our region for strategic investments,” Villafuerte said.
“Hence, our LGUs need to set up at the soonest their respective ‘green lanes’ for investments not only to support Malacañan Palace’s agenda to level up our EODB image, but also for them to seize upon this splendid opportunity for their localities to cash in on this projected pipeline of $70 billion-worth of FDI inflows resulting from our country’s post-Covid status as one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies on the Marcos watch,” he said.
Villafuerte said that in CamSur, for example, investors are most welcome to partner with local entrepreneurs in the processing and export of high-value coconut products.
During a recent presidential visit to the province, the former governor recalled that Mr. Marcos had visited CamSur’s P230-million Sustainable Agriculture and Fishery Enterprises (SAFE) Innovation Hub for the processing and marketing of value-added coconut products for export.
The “green lanes” initiative and the MIF are among the Marcos administration’s complementary measures to the reform laws on sharpening the country’s global competitiveness that were passed in the previous Congress, several of which Villafuerte had co-authored, such as the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises Act (CREATE), and the amendatory laws to the Public Service Act (PSA), Foreign Investments Act (FIA) and the Retail Trade Liberalization Act (RTLA).