A congressional leader on Saturday backed efforts of the House of Representatives to review the economic provisions of the 1987 Constitution.
House Deputy Speaker and Bagong Henerasyon Rep. Bernadette Herrera said it was “now or never” for Congress to push for the much-needed, long-overdue amendments to the restrictive economic provisions of the 1987 Constitution.
“If economic Charter reforms won’t push through this time, there’s no guarantee it will happen in the future,” Herrera said as the House is expected to begin plenary deliberations on the measure starting Monday, Feb. 8.
Voting 64-3 with 3 abstentions, the House Committee on Constitutional Amendments chaired by Ako Bicol party-list Rep. Alfredo Garbin, Jr adopted RBH 2, which was authored by Speaker Lord Allan Velasco.
The resolution seeks to amend the restrictive economic provisions of the 34-year-old Charter by inserting the phrase “unless otherwise provided by law” to specific provisions of the Constitution, namely five amendments to Article XII (National Patrimony and Economy), one amendment to Article XIV (Education, Science, and Technology), and one amendment to Article XVI (General Provisions).
The measure prescribes a constituent assembly to propose amendments to the Constitution, which requires a vote of three-fourths of all the members of Congress, each house voting separately.
According to Herrera, the grand debate on Charter Change “is the moment we have all been waiting for.” “ It’s time to amend the restrictive economic constitutional provisions that have held back the country’s development for more than three decades.”
But Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte, member of the independent bloc formed by former Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano, believed otherwise, saying the latest Charter Change (Cha-Cha) initiative that would only sidetrack national attention from the exigent concerns of Covid-19 response and quick economic recovery.
Villafuerte asked the House leadership set aside Charter change as such effort is going to be a “counterproductive and divisive political exercise.”
“I am appealing to the House leadership to quit frittering away the time and energy of the chamber’s members with its misplaced push for Cha-Cha at this time when national attention and resources should remain focused on the exigent concerns of safeguarding our people from the Covid-19 pandemic and ushering the economy out of the global financial turbulence that this coronavirus has let loose,” Villafuerte said.
He said the move of the committee to adopt the Charter Change resolution was a “bad timing.” “The committee should have taken its cue from the various sectors that have blasted Cha-Cha during the panel hearings on RBH 2 by putting the Velasco-authored resolution on the back burner so the House could instead focus on the all-important issues of Covid-19 response and a speedy economic recovery.”
“As I have been saying all along, Charter Change should have been done in the past,” said Villafuerte. “Amid the health and economic crises now sweeping across the globe, we should keep our focus on Covid-19 response, most especially the mass vaccination program, which will be the only way for us to put any semblance of normalcy back into our lives.”
Rather than devote their time and energy to Cha-Cha, Villafuerte said Charter Change proponents should, for one, lead the members of the chamber in conducting information drives in their respective districts to convince the public that the Covid-19 vaccines are safe and necessary for the country to beat the highly contagious and deadly coronavirus and its new variants.
But Herrera insisted that the COVID-19 pandemic has made the matter of amending the economic constitutional provisions urgent, as domestic markets struggled to boost the economy during the lockdown period in 2020.
She said the time was ripe to amend the economic provisions of the 34-year-old Charter to attract more foreign investments that could help the economy recover faster from the negative effects of the pandemic. “I’ve said it before and I will say it again now: we have nothing to lose but everything to gain if we liberalize the economic provisions of the Constitution,” Herrera said.
Earlier, Herrera said there was a strong indication that the proposed economic Charter amendments would make the Philippines more attractive to foreign direct investments (FDI), which is a driving factor to economic growth.
Citing a study by the University of the Philippines Public Administration Research and Extension Services Foundation Inc. (UPPAF), Herrera said the initial regression results show that FDI will increase by US$57.5 million for every one-unit point improvement in Regulatory Restrictiveness Index (RRI) Equity Restriction score.
Herrera said the removal of all FER (Foreign Equity Restrictions) in the Constitution is equivalent to the implementation of the FER score of 0.281 in 2019 to zero, which translates to a nominal increase of FDI amounting to US$16.2 billion.
This additional FDI is more than triple the current FDI up to October of $5.25 billion and does not include yet the potential FDI gains from $0.94 billion per unit increase in GDP growth and $189 million per unit increase in the country’s percentile rank in the Global Competitiveness Index.
In terms of job creation, the additional FDI will raise economic demand and total output that will eventually lead to the generation of up to 1.6 million new jobs, which is sufficient to recover 58 percent of job losses from the COVID-19 pandemic.
It will also raise total family incomes by P197 billion or P8,000 per family in the long run.