A group of Bicolano legislators led by Camarines Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte has proposed a P1.5-trillion, three-year economic stimulus program that President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM) may implement in the first half of his term to create millions of sustainable jobs and accelerate the Philippines’ recovery from the unparalleled global crisis spawned by the lingering COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Villafuerte said he and three other legislators from Camarines Sur have filed House Bill (HB) No. 271 or the National Economic Stimulus and Recovery Act of 2022, in support of President Marcos’ “comprehensive all-inclusive plan for economic transformation”—as stated in his inaugural speech last June 30—and his commitment to continue the massive infrastructure program started by former President Rodrigo Duterte.
Under HB 271, its four authors said that government infrastructure spending shall be primarily geared towards maximizing the direct and indirect creation and sustaining of jobs, particularly in the countryside.
President Marcos further said in his June 30 speech that “President Duterte built more and better than all the administrations succeeding my father’s (the late President Marcos) … following these giants steps, we will continue to build. I will complete on schedule the projects that have been started … we will be presenting the public with a comprehensive infrastructure plan … no part of our country will be neglected.”
Villafuerte said he and the other authors of the bill have taken their cue from incoming Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, who said earlier the priority legislation of the 19th Congress will be a Bayan Bangon Muli (BBM) bill patterned after the Bayanihan to Heal as One (Bayanihan 1) and Bayanihan to Recover as One (Bayanihan 2) laws that were passed swiftly in 2020 in response to the pandemic.
Romualdez has said this proposed “Bayan Bangon Muli bill stimulus package, will allow him (PBBM) to harness the resources available during the closing period of 2022 and pass measures that are needed for the pandemic, hopefully, endemic stage of this Covid. The BBM bill is seen as the successor of the Bayanihan laws passed to mitigate the negative effects of the Covid-19 lockdowns on the economy.”
With Romualdez as House majority leader in the past Congress, Villafuerte was a principal author in the bigger chamber of the Bayanihan 1 and Bayanihan 2 laws in 2020 that enabled the then-Duterte administration to access and spend massive public funds on saving Filipinos from the deadly coronavirus and on providing cash aid and other financial assistance to low-income families, displaced workers, distressed entrepreneurs and other sectors severely hurt by the global economic standstill caused by Covid-19.
The other authors of HB 271 are Camarines Sur Representatives Tsuyoshi Anthony Horibata and Miguel Luis Villafuerte, and Bicol Saro partylist Rep. Nicolas Enciso VIII.
Villafuerte said this proposed P1.5-trillion stimulus package will let President Marcos sustain the unmatched high spending on infrastructure development initiated by his predecessor, Mr. Duterte, “but this time, such investments will be focused on building and improving facilities for HEAL IT, which stands for Health, Education, Agriculture, Livelihood, Information Technology (IT) and Tourism.”
Under HB 271, its four authors said that government infrastructure spending shall be primarily geared towards maximizing the direct and indirect creation and sustaining of jobs, particularly in the countryside. “Anchored on the premise that the poor are provided employment and income-earning opportunities, this measure will prioritize the funding of projects that target infrastructure building down to the barangay level,” they said.
They said such huge infrastructure projects shall be undertaken in conjunction with the “Balik Probinsiya Program,” which, said Villafuerte, was designed (1) to stimulate growth in the countryside through rural infrastructure investments that create plenty of jobs, and (2) to ease urban congestion by encouraging jobseekers to stay put in their localities and for workers in urban areas or overseas to return home and work in their provinces.
“Infrastructure shall be the backbone of our economy following the insight of almost all respected economists and recognized policymakers. Therefore, although palliative measures such as cash transfers, unemployment dole-outs, relief, and other forms of immediate amelioration support are undoubtedly necessary now, it is in the interest of the government, the private sector, and the Filipino people at large that a lasting cure for economic resilience be established,” they stressed.
HB 271 seeks the creation of a Special Fund—to be known as the National Economic Stimulus and Recovery Fund (Recovery Fund)—that shall be disbursed primarily for the implementation of infrastructure projects across the six priority areas under HEAL IT.
This Recovery Fund’s budget for approved projects shall be automatically released to the implementing unit in order to facilitate the start-up and completion of projects and remove existing regulations and issuances that would impede the same.
Of the proposed P1.5-trillion appropriation for the three-year Recovery Fund, P500 billion shall be released in the first year of this measure’s approval, another P500 billion in the second year, and P500 billion more in the third and final year.
After three years, Congress shall enact new legislation extending or modifying the same or terminating the Fund. In the latter case, the unobligated balance shall be made available for the general budgetary requirements of the year succeeding its termination.
HB 271 proposes the establishment of an Executive Cluster Committee to formulate the guidelines in the Recovery Fund’s use, and that will have the Presidential Adviser for Flagship Programs as chairperson, the Secretaries of Public Works and of Finance as co-vice chairpersons, and the director-general of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) as secretariat head.
This proposed Executive Cluster Committee shall periodically compile all the reports of the implementing department/agencies and shall submit, within 25 days at the end of every semester, to the Office of the President (OP) plus the offices of the Senate President and the Speaker, a semestral report of the status of the projects funded by the Recovery Fund.
Villafuerte said he and the other authors of the bill have taken their cue from incoming Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, who said earlier the priority legislation of the 19th Congress will be a Bayan Bangon Muli (BBM) bill patterned after the Bayanihan to Heal as One (Bayanihan 1) and Bayanihan to Recover as One (Bayanihan 2) laws that were passed swiftly in 2020 in response to the pandemic.
In their bill, the four lawmakers said that with the country’s growth rate falling to -9.5% in 2020 and 5.6% in 2021, “The recovery of the domestic economy will ride on the back of sustained government spending across all sectors with a focus on new private and public infrastructure works that will be propelled by the Marcos administration with the BBM flagship program.”
Citing a Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) report, the authors of HB 271 said the weaker global and domestic demand during the pandemic had cost our economy between P276.3 billion under best-case scenarios and P2.5 trillion under worst-case scenarios, with the transport, storage, communication, services, tourism and wholesale and retail trade sectors absorbing substantial losses.
As per Philippine Constructors Association (PCA) data, around 1.3 million construction workers were displaced because of the pandemic-related lockdowns, and many of these workers have gone back to their provinces with no stable jobs and sources of livelihood, they said.
In addition to these locally displaced workers, they noted that the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) had reported that at least 19,466 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) have returned to the Philippines with at least 200,000 more have decided to come home because of the pandemic.
The bill’s authors said this economic stimulus plan is similar to pandemic recovery packages rolled out by other countries like the United States (US), member-states of the European Union (EU), South Korea, and Thailand.
In the US, for example, they said the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) established by the US Congress on March 31, 1933, provided jobs for millions of unemployed people during the Great Depression. Working in forest management, flood control, and conservation projects, development of state and national parks, forests, and historic sites, the hired men and women of the CCC were paid $30.00 a month and were required to “remit” a substantial part of their earnings to their homes and families to stimulate local demand and consumption.
In contemporary times, they said, the global recession of the late 2000s arising from the US subprime mortgage crisis prompted the American Congress to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) on massive infrastructure investments that contributed substantially to real gross domestic product (GDP) growth and arrested the monthly loss of nearly 700,000 jobs.
