House leaders, foreign chambers meet on pending vital measures

MANILA, Philippines -  Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. and other leaders of the House of Representatives held a dialogue yesterday with representatives of the Joint Foreign Chambers of Commerce (JFCC) on the need for the swift approval of pending bills on various concerns, including taxes, mining, and environment.

Leading the dialogue for the House was Belmonte and Hubert D’Aboville, president of the European Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines. Also present were chairmen of the key committees of the chamber.

Also present in the dialogue were representatives from the American Chamber of Commerce; Australia-New Zealand Chamber of Commerce; Board of Airline Representatives; Business Processing Association-Philippines; Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Capital Market Development Council; Employers Confederation of the Philppines; and the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI).

The JFCC earlier submitted to Congress a proposed roadmap that included 41 bills that it considered a priority by the Aquino administration but the two-hour dialogue focused on 11 measures or concerns.

Belmonte told the meeting the roadmap “for achieving faster and more inclusive economic growth which identified 41 priority legislative measures will certainly be useful in our committee and plenary discussions on key reform measures.”

He said since he assumed the helm of the House, the leadership has grouped the 58 standing committees and 11 special committees into six clusters to facilitate the passage of legislation and to coordinate committee and plenary action on priority measures.

Each cluster is headed by a deputy speaker who oversees, coordinates and monitors the performance of committees to help ensure that priority measures are acted upon and approved by the committees and the plenary on or before target schedules, he said.

To fasttrack the passage of critical legislation, the House leadership introduced a new provision, Section 48 in the House Rules, which provides that bills or resolutions considered and reported out by the committee in the immediately preceding Congress may be reported out for plenary action by the incumbent Congress, upon approval by majority of the members of the concerned committee.

He said 25 priority measures are expected to be reported to the plenary for approval before the adjournment of session on March 25 and another 40 priority bills targeted for passage before the sine die adjournment on June 9.

The JFCC representatives raised during the meeting 10 “topics of interest” or pending bills that concern them, namely, data privacy, creation of Department of Information and Communication Technology; Foreign Professionals Omnibus Amendment and Retail Trade Act amendments; Build-Operate-Transfer Law amendments; Clean Air Act amendments; Mining Act amendments; Common Carriers Tax and Gross Philippine Billings; Anti-Trust Act; Customs and Tariff Modernization Act; Rationalization of Fiscal Incentives; and the Tax Sector Neutrality Act.

The PCCI during the meeting also raised the need for the passage of a bill that would improve the implementation of the 12 percent value-added tax for exporters. The PCCI said the Bureau of Internal Revenue should improve its processes that would make the availment of tax credits of exporters much faster than the current three to four years.

The Canadian and Australian Chambers of Commerce welcomed moves to amend the Mining Act but called for legislation to regulate the power of local government units to ban open pit mining.