Albay Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda urged and appealed to Cabinet members to settle their varying issues with President Duterte and avoid using Congress as playground for policy battles that generate confusions, send wrong signals, delay the legislation process and create uncertainties among investors.
Salceda, who chairs the House Ways and Means committee, issued his appeal amid hitches in the passage of urgent measures, especially the Corporate Income Tax and Incentive Rationalization Act or CITIRA, “now on the cusp of being approved in the lower house, but for a single, individually proposed amendment.”
The measure is the second package of the Comprehensive Tax Reform Program, which seeks to reduce the corporate income tax rate from 30 percent to 20 percent for almost 1 million businesses in the country, while rationalizing incentives for some 4,100 firms which pay only 5 percent after paying none over a period.
In last week’s Cabinet meeting, the President has designated CITIRA as the principal national response to the US-China trade war. He approved CITIRA way back in Jan 2018 and sought repeatedly its congressional approval in consecutive SONAs, as a national imperative to make the country more competitive.
CITIRA is projected to create 1.566 million jobs and attain an annual incremental GDP growth of 3.6 percent. Some cabinet officials, however, came quite late with their proposals to revise the transition period for the fiscal incentives, causing delays in the bill’s passage in the House.
“I concede you have honest disagreements but please don’t use Congress as playground for your policy battles, or worse, use us as proxies or mercenaries for your skirmishes, because you are all alter egos of only one President,” said Salceda.