President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. on Monday allayed the concerns of the public regarding the possible establishment of the Maharlika Investment Fund as he said the money that will come from Filipinos will not sleep but will be used for investments.
"Hindi 'yun basta't, oh sige, bigyan niyo ako ng ilang bilyong dolyar tapos ilalagay lang 'yan basta akong bahala na diyan (It's not about giving me billions of dollars to just be put wherever I like). It's not like that at all," Marcos said in a media interview.
The President assured Filipinos that their money will be protected should the proposed bill be passed into law as the fund will only be used on very specific and accountable projects.
He said the the multi-billion peso fund will serve as the seed money for the sovereign fund.
"Now, whenever we come into partnership, we do a G2G (Government-to-Government) with Japan, for example, or we do a PPP (public-private partnership) with some big outfit, then that is only the time that the money has come into the fund to be used for the program," he said.
The President also responded to remarks made by some lawmakers about the use of money coming from government-owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs) for the sovereign fund, which they said is not allowed by law.
"I agree with that. You cannot use funds of the GOCC; pera ng gobyerno 'yun (that's government's money). What will the government spend? It was a proposal. It's not something that we have adopted," Marcos defended.
According to the President, every single GOCC has its own charter, and the government has to revise all of those charters to align them with the Maharlika Fund, noting this is not the purpose of the GOCC.
"This is a lot of income that goes to the national government that will go into the Maharlika Fund and cannot be used for the budget of the national government. And we have many things... that we would like to appropriate in the coming years, and we will need those funds," he said.
"So I don't think that's a viable proposition, at least not for us... I know that there are other sovereign wealth funds that have been in that way. But it's– parang hindi bagay sa atin 'yun eh. Kaya't (It's not appropriate for us. So) we are a little lukewarm about that idea," he added.