The country should continue to adopt fiscal reforms, particularly tax reforms still pending in Congress, to sustain the fiscal gains achieved by the government in the past years, the Department of Finance said over the weekend.
Finance Undersecretary and chief economist Gil Beltran said in an economic bulletin that fiscal reforms enabled the country to fund the unprecedented fiscal requirements imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and protect its strong macroeconomic fundamentals.
“The fiscal reforms adopted by the Duterte administration, including tax reforms and the utilization of idle savings in the public sector, boosted the revenue effort to its second highest level in history, eclipsed only by the 2019 level attained during the period of an economic boom,” Beltran said.
“These reforms made the country one of the six strongest emerging economies to meet the challenges of the pandemic,” he said.
Beltran issued the statement following latest reports that the national government’s revenues dropped by 9 percent in 2020 due to the pandemic.