The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) yesterday said it will push for a 30-percent threshold in work-from-home arrangement to give registered business enterprises (RBEs) flexibility in their operations without losing their incentives.
This after the Department of Justice (DOJ) in a legal opinion restricted the enjoyment of incentives to RBEs that operate 100 percent on-site in ecozones, a move that is seen impacting the information technology-business process management (IT-BPM) sector.
“As we have submitted to the House of Representatives, DTI actually recommends a 30-percent work-from-home threshold for RBEs in ecozones,” said DTI Undersecretary Ceferino Rodolfo when sought for comment on the DOJ opinion made public yesterday but issued Jan. 3, 2024 to the Office the President.
This is DTI’s position to the proposed amendments to the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises (CREATE) authored by Rep. Joey Salceda.
The DOJ opinion also said the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Investment and Economic Affairs proposes to implement a standard maximum of 30 percent WFH policy for RBEs across all investment promotion agencies, including the Board of Investments (BOI) and the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA).
“The legal opinion essentially confirms the existing mechanism that provides the flexibility that now allows us to continue to attract BPO (business process outsourcing) investments into the Philippines,” Rodolfo said.
He added the DTI also supports allowing those which have transferred to BOI to seamlessly go back to their PEZA registration if they prefer.
“Once locators are given this flexibility (to implement WFH), we also support allowing those which have transferred to BOI to take advantage of this legal solution to go back to PEZA,” said Rodolfo, also BOI managing head.
The DOJ clarified the opinion does not cover companies which have shifted their registration to BOI.
Rodolfo said this flexibility will allow the Philippines to compete with countries giving the same to their RBEs, such as India to IT-BPM companies.
He said companies themselves would like to have on-site work because of issues like redundancy and data privacy.
