Three House leaders have filed House Bill 8059 or the Bayanihan to Rebuild as One Act which will provide P247-billion in emergency response and economic recovery programs.
House Majority Leader Ferdinand Martin Romualdez (Leyte, 1st District), Deputy Speaker Sharon S. Garin (AAMBIS-OWA), and House Ways and Means Chair Rep. Joey Salceda (Albay, 2nd district) are confident that the House is likely to pass the measure within the next two weeks.
In comments on the filing of the bill, Salceda, who co-chairs the House Economic Stimulus and Recovery Cluster, says that the interventions are made primarily to ensure that national and local government units can mobilize “robust response and recovery programs” in the face of recent typhoons and slower than expected recovery in the third quarter of the year.
“I made it clear to the economic managers that if we recover more quickly than expected in the 3rd quarter, a third Bayanihan may no longer be necessary. Seeing as it is that the economy did not recover as quickly as expected in the past quarter, and given the recent spate of typhoons, we need to provide emergency aid,” Salceda said.
Interventions
The measure includes P20 billion for the procurement of vaccines, the creation of a vaccine committee, and measures to ensure the sufficiency of health supplies.
The proposal also contains Salceda’s pet interventions, including rental housing relief, an eviction moratorium, condonation of agrarian reform loans, small business regulatory relief, and credit mediation and refinancing assistance.
The measure also includes a P40 billion local government support fund for calamity response, P100 billion in health and resiliency related infrastructure programs, P10 billion in assistance programs for agriculture and fisheries, P7 billion for rent refinancing, P10 billion for companies to borrow for paying 13th month benefits, P10 billion for Tulong Para sa Displaced workers (TUPAD), P10 billion for the Covid Assistance Measures Program (CAMP), P 10 billion for Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situation (AICS), P10 billion for the Medical Assistance for Indigents Program (MAIP), P5 billion each for TESDA and CHED, and another P10 billion for DepEd programs.
Salceda adds that while the first two Bayanihan measures were able to keep the economy afloat, he believes that the 3rd stimulus measure is “the necessary booster shot so we can truly begin recuperating in 2021.”