A P200 unconditional cash subsidy for the poor sector was recommended by the government’s economic cluster.
This was the recommendation given to President Rodrigo Duterte as the government’s response to help the poor sectors of society amid the continued increase in the prices of petroleum products.
According to Department of Finance (DOF) Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, the foremost recommendation was to provide an unconditional cash transfer program of P200 per month per household for one year for the bottom 50 percent of poor Filipinos, which is worth about P33.1 billion.
The DOF chief said that they know this is not enough, but this is what the government can do for the meantime.
The second recommendation, says Dominguez, was to allow the collection of excise taxes to remain, a tax collection measure being implemented under the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion or TRAIN Law.
He explained that the government can collect P147 billion in excise tax for the whole year.
This amount is already allocated to several government expenses, including the “Build, Build. Build” program, wages of government employees, including those of soldiers, police and teachers.
If the excise tax is suspended, the government may not be able to provide these benefits and the country will have a debt-to-GDP ration of 8.2 percent from the previous 7.7 percent, which means the government may have to borrow again.
On the other hand, the Value Added Tax (VAT) from oil, Dominguez said, will provide an additional P20 billion collection, which can be used to provide the subsidy to the poor sector.
An additional recommendation by National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) Director General Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua was to save on energy consumption, citing the possible implementation of a four-day work week as an example.
Chua explained that under the scheme, employees and workers will work for 10 hours per day instead of the usual eight hours to be able to complete the 40-hours-per-week requirement.
This way, Chua said that by working for only a total of four days per week instead of five, they will be able to save one day in terms of fare and food expenses.
On the part of Department of Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi, he appealed to the government to extend the work-from-home setup, while for the Department of Labor and Employment, it asked the president to approve the recommended wage subsidy for private sector workers worth P24 billion, which will be given to 1 million workers in a span of three months, or from April to June 2022.