The Senate has approved on third and final reading Senate Bill 2426 or the “Tatak Pinoy” (Proudly Filipino) bill that seeks to boost the marketing of products and services from the Philippines.
The bill was one of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.’s 12 priority measures which he enumerated in his last State of the Nation Address (SONA).
The bill was approved on Monday by the Senate with 23 affirmative votes, zero negative and no abstentions. It mandates the formulation, financing, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of a comprehensive and multi-year “Tatak Pinoy” Strategy (TPS).
The TPS will be continuously improved upon by a “Tatak Pinoy” Council that will be led by the socioeconomic planning secretary as chairperson and the secretaries of Trade and Industry and Finance as vice-chairpersons.
The bill was introduced and sponsored by Senator Sonny Angara, Senate Finance Committee chair.
Proponents said Tatak Pinoy started out as an idea on how to make the Philippine economy stronger by empowering businesses and industries to produce better, more unique and sophisticated goods and services.
“Tatak Pinoy will strengthen the partnership between the government and the private sector. With better coordination between the two sides, government will be able to implement more projects that will benefit the private sector—be it infrastructure or other initiatives such as those that will improve the skills and capabilities of our workforce,” Angara said.
It is also consistent with the Philippine Export Development Plan 2023-2028 insofar as making locally-produced goods more globally competitive and expanding the level of exports to other countries, Angara said.
“With Tatak Pinoy, the goal is to improve the competitiveness of our industries so that they can grow faster and produce more better paying jobs for our people,” Angara said.
Tatak Pinoy was inspired by the Atlas of Economic Complexity developed by Dr. Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard University and Cesar Hidalgo, who was with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is now with the University of Toulouse in France, which analyzed why certain economies perform better than others.
The Atlas, which ranks the Philippines 33rd among 128 countries, hypothesizes that countries that are more economically complex develop and grow at a faster pace.
This means that countries that are able to produce more complex goods are more likely to experience higher growth rates since what they export are higher value products.
“The Philippines has a huge potential for growth that has yet to be untapped. With the Tatak Pinoy bill, we are confident that we will be able to help our industries in expanding their reach in the world market, provide a significant boost to our economy, and provide our people with greater opportunities to earn more,” Angara said.