Bayanihan<\/em>\n2 bill recently approved by the Senate is passed into law, said the group. The\nproposed Php140 billion stimulus program is worth just 0.7% of the GDP and will\nbring the country\u2019s fiscal response only to 3.8% of GDP. The IMF notes that\ncountry data are not always strictly comparable but the figures are nonetheless\nindicative.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIBON said that upcoming national government (NG) budgets meanwhile\nsee the smallest post-crisis \u2018stimulus\u2019 increases in decades, further\nundermining economic recovery. Department of Budget and Management National\nBudget Memorandum No. 136 only foresees a 5.7% budget increase in 2021 falling\nto an even smaller 1.8% increase in 2022, despite the country facing the worst\neconomic decline in its history in 2020 because of the pandemic. The budget\nincrease in 2021 would be the smallest in a decade and in 2022 the smallest in\nover 30 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These increases also compare unfavorably with budget increases\nafter the 1997 Asian financial crisis and 2008 global financial and economic\ncrisis. After the Thai Baht collapsed in 1997, the NG budget rose by 9.3% in\n1998 and then by 8.0% in 1999. After the Lehman Brothers firm collapsed in\n2008, the NG budget rose by 9.1% in 2009 and by 2.7% in 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The economic managers have been blocking larger stimulus packages\nproposed by Congress since at least May, the group said. The House of\nRepresentatives and Senate took up more meaningful stimulus measures worth at\nleast Php1.3 trillion or more but stopped when the finance department told them\nto because these were \u2018unfundable\u2019 and \u2018unsustainable\u2019. These\nmeasures would have been closer to the global average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Among others, this also affirms that the so-called power of the\npurse of Congress is illusory and how the president and executive branch are\nactually in complete control of the country\u2019s finances. The\npresident can implement a bigger stimulus package if he wants to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The obsession of the economic managers with \u2018creditworthiness\u2019 is\nmisplaced, said IBON. Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia have lower credit ratings\nthan the Philippines but are spending more to respond to and recover from the\npandemic. Financing can be raised by reallocating from less productive\ninfrastructure and debt service, and by a more progressive tax system with\nhigher taxes on large firms and the wealth of the country\u2019s super-rich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The magnitude of the country\u2019s response has to be commensurate to the crisis at hand. This should span health measures, continued cash subsidies to improve household welfare and boost aggregate demand, and support especially to Filipino and domestic market-oriented micro, small and medium enterprises, said the group.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEWS<\/p>\n
Philippine spending in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is among the smallest in the region. The narrow-minded obsession with \u2018creditworthiness\u2019 stops the government from taking the urgent steps needed to restore livelihoods and save the economy. <\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2048,14],"tags":[2199,2218,347,2265,2335,116],"class_list":["post-10054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banner","category-news","tag-covid-19","tag-covid-19-response","tag-duterte-administration","tag-economic-stimulus","tag-fiscal-policy-response","tag-philippine-economy","wpautop"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-23 19:19:23","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10054"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10057,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10054\/revisions\/10057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}