THE government may be able to catch up with its Build, Build, Build program if regular construction starts by midyear, as quarantine measures implemented to address the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) restricted many economic activities since March.
Carlos Dominguez, Department of Finance secretary, said in a webinar last Wednesday while no one actually knows how long the pandemic is going to be around, if it is going to behave like the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), it should be on its way out by this month.
“I don’t know when this contagion is going to work its way out, we’re just assuming that it’s going to behave like SARS. SARS started and ended in a seven-month period. So I figure that if this is the same pattern, and that’s the only contagion that we have any experience with, it should be on the wane starting around May,” Dominguez said.
“Of course, we are not unaware of the fact that you know, if we lift the lockdown too quickly, we might have a spike. So we are going to be very careful,” he added.
Dominguez said if regular construction operations for Build, Build, Build projects can be started sometime in June, “we will be able to catch up by the end of the year.”
“But again, I don’t know if that catch up will be enough to overcome damage that was done from March 15 to May 15, so I really don’t know,” the finance chief said.
“But we are prepared, and incidentally the financing for all those projects are already in place. These, by and large, are financed by the bilateral financing we got primarily from Japan, some from China, some from Korea. So we are ready with those funds and we are ready to start those programs, and we have experience in catching up,” he added.
Dominguez was referring to the four- or five-month delay in the Build, Build, Build last year, due to the delay in the passage of the budget for 2019.
The Build, Build, Build program is composed of the government’s flagship projects, seen to help boost the economy, generate jobs and provide the infrastructure that the country needs.
“I want to make sure that the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) is going to collect all the taxes that they have postponed, and if things are already in, if we’ve seen the end of COVID-19, we will be stepping on the gas with our Build, Build, Build program,” Dominguez said.
Dominguez was referring to taxes that are yet to be collected, as the BIR adjusted deadlines for tax payments and filing of tax returns, in consideration of tax filers whose movements are limited by the ongoing quarantine measures.
“Remember that the tax collections that were postponed in April 15 were for income actually earned last year. What we’re actually only losing now is, immediately, is value-added tax collections for the last three months,” Dominguez said.
“We’re expecting… we’ll be collecting P300 billion less than our target,” he added.
