DAVAO CITY – A day after the transition team of President-elect Rodrigo Duterte bared theireight-point economic agenda, leftist group, Bayan offered its version of the economic program which it say is anchored on “real change”.
Bayan’s eight-point program included:
1. End the neo-liberal economic policies of the Aquino regime. Pursue national industrialization, economic sovereignty and the strengthening of the domestic economy. End the import-dependent, export-oriented, backward, pre-industrial economic set-up.
2. Review and reverse existing and proposed PPP projects. Pursue people-oriented infrastructure development that would help develop industry and agriculture. Develop government-supported mass transport systems.
3. Pursue economic sovereignty and strengthening of the domestic economy and abandon all plans for economic Charter change. Review the business terms of big foreign mining companies, coal plants, large plantations and other enterprises that plunder the national patrimony and destroy the environment.
4. Truly develop the agricultural sector through genuine land reform and the implementation of various forms of collective farming with increased government support. Make agriculture address domestic needs rather foreign demands.
5. Increase government spending for basic social services such as health and housing.
6. Increase state subsidy for education on all levels. Implement a moratorium on tuition fee increases. Stop the implementation of the K-12 program.
7. Pursue income tax reforms for working people. Increase pension for SSS members. Go after the big tax evaders and smugglers from big business. Scrap the VAT on electricity and oil products.
8. Make domestic job creation a priority instead of relying on CCT to address poverty. End the regime of labor contractualization. Support workers and employees calls for a national minimum wage. Address the urgent demands of migrant workers.
The outline of the economic program of the incoming Duterte administration was presented by businessman Carlos Dominguez III on Thursday, here.
The agenda were: to continue and maintain the current macroeconomic policies; acceleration of infrastructure spending by addressing, among others, major bottlenecks in the Private Public Partnership program; ensuring attractiveness of the Philippines to foreign direct investments (FDI) by addressing restrictive economic provisions in the Constitution and by-laws, and enhancing competitiveness of the economy; pursuing a genuine agricultural development strategy by providing support services to the small farmers to increase their productivity; addressing the bottlenecks in the land administration and management system; strengthening the basic education system; improving the income tax system; and expanding and improving the implementation of the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program.
However, Renato Reyes, secretary general of Bayan said the proposed Duterte economic agenda “is a continuation of the neo-liberal poison imposed on the people by the Aquino regime.”
“In response to his proposals, we offer a different eight-point economic program anchored on real change,” he said.
Meanwhile, Duterte’s spokesman Peter Laviña denied that the economic agenda to be pursued by the incoming administration is similar to the Aquino administration.
“If they are saying this is just like Aquino I think that is not correct, because precisely, we are addressing these problems because this administration failed to accomplish that objective. Our poverty incidence remains at about 27 percent, even if our growth is reaching 7, or even more than 7 percent,” he told the media in a briefing on Friday, here.
“The very nature, why we picked all those eight is the fact that for several years we have seen our economic growth. In fact, they are saying we are one of the best performing economy countries in Asia if not the world. But unfortunately this is not trickling down to our people,” Laviña said.
Laviña said they will welcome both positive and negative feedback, “because we’d like to learn from all the issues that are being raised against this 8-point agenda.”
“We are not stopping on that, these are just the doables we want to undertake as soon as possible. We still have six years to accomplish the economic platform of the new administration,” he said.(davaotoday.com)
