Business

Bizmen present wishlist to Duterte

June 21, 2016 | 11:45pm

DAVAO CITY — Businessmen presented on Tuesday their wishlist to President-elect Rodrigo Duterte after two days of consultations with his economic managers.

With his 10-point economic agenda in mind, more than 400 corporate executives capped their two-day workshop here by giving their top 10 recommendations for economic policy of the incoming administration before it takes over by noon of June 30.

"The discussions have been unique and productive one. The entire group huddled in a workshop and they exchanged ideas extensively. They enriched each others' contribution," Finance Secretary-designate Carlos Dominguez said.

George Barcelon, president of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said: "This is to provide building blocks for collective synergy and competitive landscape supportive of growth."

After the presentation, Duterte said he will study the proposals, which he said are "doable."

The recommendations were the following:

adoption of a comprehensive tax reform package that will reduce corporate and personal income tax and capital gains levies. Tax rates could be made "a little lower" than regional peers;
implementation of national ID system for improved targeting of social services. This, Barcelon said, will allow informal settlers to be "properly identified" for improved access to health and education;
automation and streamlining of business permits and licensing systems, easier land titling to eliminate windows of corruption. This includes automatic renewal of licenses "after a certain period of time" of inaction.
improvements of the Internet and telecommunications services to be "competitive in the best of the region." This includes removal of congressional franchises, companies being granted international gateway licenses and investing and renting out of cables;
delivery of support systems to farmers, fishermen such as financing, incentives, technology, farm-to-market roads, irrigation and post-harvest facilities;
implementation of responsible mining that limits raw material exports to grow value-added processing locally;
development and implementation of national strategy for industries where the country has greatest competitive advantage;
"speedy" improvement of transport network across the country to improve connectivity. This includes using regional airports and seaports to decongest their Manila counterparts and fast tracking North-South Railway Project, C-6 Road Project, Cebu Bus Rapid Project and Mindanao Railway Project;
review of conditional cash transfer (CCT) program "because it is perceived as one that promotes dependency on government." Instead of CCT, poor should be provided cash-for-work, livelihood and supplemental support;
and reduction in the bottlenecks in the public-private partnership and other infrastructure projects and respect of sanctity of contracts.

This was the first time that a president-elect had conducted a consultation with the business community, which hailed the move.