A ranking solon wants to know just how much of the P34.72-billion bailout package for the business sector under the Bayanihan to Recover as One Act or Bayanihan 2 law was actually used by tourism entrepreneurs at the height of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Camarines Sur 2nd district Rep. LRay Villafuerte, majority leader of the powerful Commission on Appointments (CA) in the House of Representatives, was referring to a key provision under Republic Act (RA) 11519, which he authored.
The relief funds were supposed to include a P10-billion outlay originally allotted for infrastructure projects of the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA) in the House of Representatives' version of the Bayanihan 2 bill.
However, this outlay was scrapped in the finalized version of the measure following what Villafuerte described as "subsequent lobbying in the Senate by the DOT and certain industry players". This supposedly took place during the previous administration.
“Amid the assertion then by DOT officials and certain industry players that tourism infrastructure was not a priority at the time, the P10-billion intended by the House for TIEZA ended up being allotted to government financial institutions (GFIs) for bailing out Covid-affected businesses, including those in the tourism industry,” according to Villafuerte.
“Given President Marcos’s apt push for tourism infrastructure, it seems appropriate for the DOT to tell us how much of the P34.72-billion bailout fund for Covid-hit businesses under Bayanihan 2 had actually been released to rescue resort operators and other financially distressed entrepreneurs and establishments in the tourism industry," he noted.
At the same time, Villafuerte said: “We also want to know from the DOT how and where the government intends to spend the allocation for tourism infrastructure under the ‘Build Better More’ infrastructure development program of President Marcos, who has rightly put a premium on tourism infrastructure spending in order to attract more tourists to the Philippines.”
Citing reports, the Bicolano said the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) plans to spend P133 million for network development to build new roads and widen existing ones. Of the amount P15.7 billion will reportedly be spent on links to tourism destinations.
Such P15.7-billion allotment will supposedly be used by the government to improve over 16 kilometers (km) of roads leading to airports, 27.5 km leading to seaports, and 308 km leading to tourist destinations.
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Villafuerte recalled that the House, under then-Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano, endorsed in 2020 an allocation of P10 billion from the Bayanihan 2 stimulus package for Covid-19 response for tourism infrastructure under TIEZA.
He explained that this proposed P10-billion infrastructure budget was included in the House-approved version of Bayanihan 2 on the legislators’ belief that “more and better tourism infrastructure projects needed to be built in 2021 and onwards for the government to rev up this Covid-battered sector anew as a boom industry and major dollar-earner once the pandemic is over".
“The then-proposed TIEZA infrastructure spending would have helped provide many jobs to dislocated industry workers and boost local economies, as infrastructure investments have a high multiplier effect of 3.5—meaning, it will generate P3.50 for the economy for every P1 investment—that would have generated badly needed economic activity in the tourism sites,” Villafuerte said.