A former House leader is prodding senators to prioritize the passage of there version of the Covid-19 Unemployment Reduction Economic Stimulus or CURES bill.
“Our senators could show their support for the speedy and robust recovery of our economy from the Covid-driven global health and economic crises by giving top priority to the passage of the Senate version of CURES when the Congress resumes session after the May elections,” Camarines Sur 2nd district Rep.LRay Villafuerte said in a statement.
“The passage of CURES would cement the legacy of the Congress that has ably helped the Duterte administration, our people and the domestic economy survive and eventually prevail over the worst global recession since the Great Depression by writing the Bayanihan to Heal as One (Bayanihan 1) and Bayanihan to Recover as One (Bayanihan 2) laws," he noted.
Villafuerte, a former House deputy speaker, served as principal author of the two pandemic response laws.
The Bicolano made the call to the upper chamber as he lauded President Duterte's issuance last week of Executive Order (EO) No. 166 on a 10-Point Agenda on Economic Recovery.
He said the 18th Congress could throw its full support behind the Duterte administration’s culminating bounce-back program by passing the CURES bill, which is essentially meant to ramp up state spending on health, education, agriculture, local roads, livelihood, information and communication technology (ICT) and tourism infrastructure.
CURES, which was sponsored by Villafuerte, Taguig-Pateros Rep. and former Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano and over 200 other legislators, was passed by the House on third and final reading back in June 2020, but remains pending at the Senate.
The Bicolano said that greater economic activity resulting from higher infrastructure spending “would boost business and consumer confidence, and generate a lot of jobs to offset those that were lost following the almost two-year economic standstill, which was a result of the mobility restrictions imposed by the government since March 2020 to hold back the coronavirus pandemic".
He said that CURES seeks to create, appropriate and automatically release a special outlay dubbed the CURES Fund equivalent to P1.5 trillion over a three-year period to bankroll infrastructure projects in so-called HEAL IT priority areas.