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MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte’s newly adopted 10-point policy agenda to accelerate the country’s economic recovery from the two-year pandemic-driven global slump was urged by a lawmaker on Monday to hasten the Senate’s passage of the PHP1.5-trillion stimulus package approved by the House for increased infrastructure investments.

The passage of the Covid-19 Unemployment Reduction Economic Stimulus (CURES), according to Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte, will increase state spending on health, education, agriculture, local roads, livelihood, information, and communication technology (ICT), and tourism (HEAL IT) infrastructure, and support Executive Order (EO) No. 166 on a 10-Point Agenda on Economic Recovery.

EO 166 intends to maintain existing economic benefits, mitigate the long-term negative impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, and re-establish the country’s development trajectory.

It directs government offices to improve healthcare capacity, accelerate and expand the vaccination program, reopen the economy and expand public transportation capacity, resume face-to-face learning, relax domestic travel restrictions and standardize local government unit requirements, and relax international travel requirements.

The EO also directs the national government to use legislative measures to accelerate digital transformation, provide for enhanced and flexible emergency measures, shift the focus of decision-making and government reporting to more useful and empowering metrics, and prepare for pandemic resilience in the medium term.

“By giving top priority to the approval of the Senate version of CURES, our senators may signal their support for a quick and strong recovery of our economy from the Covid-driven global health and economic crisis,” Villafuerte said in a statement.

Villafuerte believes that increased economic activity as a result of increased infrastructure spending will enhance company and consumer confidence, as well as create a large number of jobs to compensate for those lost during the pandemic’s “two-year economic halt.”

CURES aims to create, appropriate, and automatically release a special outlay termed the CURES Fund worth PHP1.5 trillion over three years to fund infrastructure projects in the HEAL IT priority regions, with PHP500 billion worth of projects per year, according to him.

With the economy reopening as a result of the NCR and nearly 50 other places being placed on a more relaxed Alert Level 1 status, Villafuerte said one priority under the proposed CURES is to speed up economic recovery is considerably higher spending on tourism infrastructure.

“Spending on tourism infrastructure, which is one of the domestic sectors hardest hit by the two-year Covid-19 crisis, would hopefully undo the blunder made by our tourism officials in prioritizing state rehabilitation funds for soft loans to tourism-related establishments rather than for building tourism infrastructure in preparation for the complete reopening of our tourist destinations for both domestic and foreign tourists,” Villafuerte said.

He was referring to a Commission on Audit (COA) report dated March 2 that stated that as of June 30, 2021, the Small Business Corp. (SBC) had released only PHP4.09 billion of the PHP9.08 billion earmarked for the Department of Trade and Industry’s Covid-19 Assistance to Restart Enterprises (CARES) Program for distribution as collateral-free, zero-interest loans to micro, small, and medium enterprises for distribution as collateral-free, zero-interest loans to micro, small, and (MSMEs).

President Rodrigo Roa Duterte signed Executive Order (EO) 166 on Monday, urging all government departments and offices to implement a 10-point policy plan to speed the Philippine economy’s recovery from the current Covid-19 pandemic.

All state departments, bureaus, offices, agencies, and instrumentalities, including government-owned or controlled corporations and state universities and colleges, are required to ensure that all related policies, measures, and programs are aligned with the adopted policy agenda under Executive Order 166.

The approval of the 10-point policy agenda for the country’s economic recovery, according to Presidential Spokesperson and Communications Secretary Martin Andanar, is not an “exit plan” only from the coronavirus outbreak.

The policy agenda, according to Andanar, is part of the preparations for the “new normal.”

“We do not believe this is the current administration’s exit strategy,” Andanar added, “since it is part of the country’s readiness to create resilience under the New Normal.”

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