THE tandem of presidential candidate Sen. Panfilo Lacson and vice presidential aspirant Senate President Vicente Sotto III will establish a central financing facility for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) if they win the May 9 elections to make it easier for small firms to seek government assistance.
“Senate President Sotto and I were thinking, why not pool all these into one fund to help MSMEs, whether they are hit by the pandemic, the conflict in Ukraine, climate change, or other calamities? The bottom line is they will know where to seek assistance)?” Lacson said at the “Kandidatalks” program aired Wednesday in One PH television channel.
He said MSMEs account for 99.5 percent of the country’s enterprise, equivalent to 63.2 percent of the labor force.
He said many MSMEs are not aware of the various government programs where they can seek financial help, including microfinancing and credit facilities, which are all under the Department of Trade and Industry.
Lacson said what’s even worse is that many MSMEs tend to borrow money from private banks because they do not fully understand the requirements to avail of government assistance.
In the same interview, Lacson maintained his position to stop the practice of labor contractualization in the country.
He, however, said he wants to balance competing interests on this matter so that one side would not be put at extreme disadvantage over the other.
The senator said he wanted to protect the working-class sector who are being denied permanent employment under the existing end-of-contract or ‘endo’ culture by giving them security of tenure.
But he said that employers’ concern should also be considered since it might negatively affect some aspects of their businesses, one reason why they always express their reservations when legislative measures against contractualization are proposed.
“I think we need to balance [the interests] of our business [sector] and our working-class, the employees, because they’re competing. It’s like to favor one would disfavor the other, but not necessarily, we really just have to balance it,” Lacson said, a middle ground could be reached through dialogues.
He said the present 18th Congress has already approved a proposed legislation terminating the endo culture, but this was vetoed by President Duterte.
Lacson was referring to Senate Bill 1826 or the Security of Tenure Bill, which was authored and sponsored by Sen. Joel Villanueva. Both Houses of Congress passed the measure, but Malacañang returned it in July 2019 without Duterte’s signature.
