Top officials of the Philippines and New Zealand have reaffirmed their cooperation in implementing two projects that will help improve the Duterte administration’s efforts to improve the ease of doing business here and increase revenue collections from Manila’s airline providers.
In a recent meeting with New Zealand Ambassador to Manila David Strachan, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III expressed his support for the two projects, which are in sync with the priorities of the Department of Finance (DOF).
New Zealand, which, according to Strachan , was ranked by the World Bank as the No.1 country in terms of ease of doing business, has offered to send an experts’ mission to Manila to help the Philippine government in its ongoing initiatives to cut red tape and ensure a business-friendly environment for investors.
“We will welcome the support of Department of Finance to this initiative,” Strachan said.
Strachan informed Dominguez that “these experts will meet many government partners and other stakeholders and they will produce a series of recommendations that could contribute to the whole decision making process” of the Philippine government in term of its efforts to improve the ease of doing business.
The ambassador was accompanied at the meeting by New Zealand Trade Commissioner to the Philippines Hernando Banal and New Zealand Embassy’s Deputy Head of Mission Matthew de Wit.
Joining Dominguez in the meeting were DOF Undersecretary Antonette Tionko and Assistant Secretary Maria Edita Tan.
Strachan said the Philippines can learn from New Zealand’s program of operating a one-stop automated shop for business registrations, which has “resulted in immeasurable economic and social benefits.”
The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP), Strachan said, can also adopt Airways New Zealand’s “Flight-Yield” automated aviation billing system to help raise more revenues from the fees that the government collects from airline operators.
New Zealand’s Flight-Yield system automatically retrieves details of all flights from an air traffic management system and apply the appropriate charging policy for each air traffic control service provided to each flight, allowing the computation of the correct fee for every flight by each airline operator.
Dominguez said he will endorse New Zealand’s experts’ mission, which has already gained the support of the Department of Trade and Industry, and will direct the DOF’s anti-red tape czar, Undersecretary Gil Beltran , to take part in it.
The finance chief likewise informed the Ambassador of the significant progress that the DOF has made in eliminating red tape at the Bureaus of Internal Revenue and of Customs, and its partnership with the Department of Information and Communications Technology in setting up a business and citizens registry similar to the online system set up by Amazon.com for its customers.
Strachan said the Flight Yield system was first presented by New Zealand officials to CAAP in December 2014 but nothing came out of their discussions.
It was presented anew in October last year to the CAAP board, which agreed that its finance committee, headed by DOF Undersecretary Karen Singson, would evaluate the proposal, according to Strachan.
Dominguez said that he will instruct Assistant Secretaries Mark Dennis Joven and Paola Alvarez to sit with the CAAP officials to get the project going.
Dominguez and Strachan also discussed growing global concerns over US President Donald Trump’s protectionist policies, the emerging China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and the Philippines’ economic ties with China and Japan.
The finance chief earlier said that the Duterte administration’s proposed Comprehensive Tax Reform Program (CTRP) will help create a strong buffer that will shield the Philippine economy from the surge of protectionism sweeping across the globe.
Dominguez said the growing uncertainty in global prospects as a result of recent external developments means the country would “need to prepare well and build a solid fiscal buffer to keep us strong when the storm comes.”
“We must be fiscally prepared to invest more heavily in our human capital and in much needed infrastructure,” Dominguez said.
