Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Vol. IV, No. 30 August 29 - September 4, 2004 Quezon City, Philippines |
Every
Filipino Owes P41,000 Every
Filipino owes creditor banks and financial institutions P40,954 ($731) and
this is because the Philippines currently has a P3.35 trillion ($$50
billion) in foreign debt. An alliance has been launched to oppose new
taxes and to call for debt repudiation – a demand which found support
from an administration congressman. BY
ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO Many
Filipinos are unaware that for every peso they earn they pay P0.40 to
people they don’t even know. This is because, according to Rep. Eduardo Zialcita (Lakas-CMD, Parañaque City), the country has a foreign debt burden of P3.35 trillion ($59.8 billion) as of end-2003. Given the country’s current population of 82 million and on a per capita basis, the administration congressman said Aug. 27, “every Filipino – man, woman, and child – owes creditor banks and financial institutions P40,954 ($731.32).” “For
every peso, we pay P0.40 each,” he added. “That is immoral, and even
criminal.” All Filipinos “owe money to people they don’t even
know.” Speaking
in a forum launching the broad-cased Alliance of Concerned Citizens
Opposed to Unjust New Taxes (ACCOUNT) at the University of the
Philippines-College of Social Work and Community Development (UP-CSWCD) in
Diliman, Quezon, Zialcita also backed the long-standing call of
cause-oriented groups and nationalist economists for the repudiation of
the country’s foreign debt. Before
the government imposes new taxes, he said, it should first audit the
public debt to see which of its loans are fraudulent, which are behest,
and which are really beneficial – and repudiate the onerous debts. President
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, in her State of the Nation Address (SoNA) July
26, introduced eight new revenue measures (see Bulatlat
article, New
Taxes will Weigh Heavily on Ordinary Filipinos) which, according to
her, would remedy the country’s budget deficit. The Philippines
currently suffers from an P80-billion ($1.43-billion) budget deficit. Debt
servicing presently receives the biggest annual budgetary allocation, even
as the Philippine Constitution prohibits automatic appropriations for debt
servicing. The military runs next in the government’s highest budgetary
priorities. “BUWISit” In
the same forum, Carmen Deunida of the progressive party-list group
Anakpawis (Toiling Masses) had described the administration’s new tax
proposals as “BUWISit,”
apparently intending a play on the Filipino words buwis
for tax and buwisit for
“jinx”. “These
new tax proposals would directly hit the ordinary Filipinos – who could
now hardly eat because they do not earn enough for a decent meal,” the
feisty urban poor leader said. The
daily minimum wage is now P300 ($5.36), way below the P594 ($10.61) daily
cost of living for a family of six or the average Filipino family, based
on computations by Bulatlat’s
Danilo Araña Arao. Arao used data from the National Wages and
Productivity Commission for his computations. “These
amount to another killing of the Filipino people,” Deunida added. Trixie
Concepcion of Agham (Association of Science and Technology Advocates for
the People) and the broad-based mobile phone users’ group TXTPower
reasoned similarly. The
fastest way Among
the proposed tax measures is the shift from net income taxation to gross
income taxation. But, according to former Finance Undersecretary Milwida
Guevarra who also spoke at the forum, this would double or even triple the
tax burden. Deunida
also called for improved tax collection. Former Budget Secretary Salvador
Enriquez and former Internal Revenue Commissioner Liwayway Vinzons-Chato
made similar calls. “The
country’s top tax evader, Lucio Tan, has not been punished to this
day,” Deunida noted. Tan has billions of pesos in unpaid taxes dating
several administrations back. The
speakers at the forum, including Gabriela Women’s Party Rep. Liza Maza
who delivered the opening remarks, all took swipes at what they described
as massive corruption in the government. The United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) had recently reported that as much as 13 percent of the
country’s annual budget is lost to corruption, but ACCOUNT in its
Manifesto of Unity disclosed an even higher figure: 20-30 percent. Non-tax
alternatives Bayan
Muna (People First) Rep. Teddy Casiño discussed non-tax alternatives to
the revenue measures: improvement in tax administration, the reversal of
pro-globalization policies which he said directly affect revenues (such as
fiscal incentives for foreign firms and “favored monopolies”),
reduction of the public debt, crackdown on corruption in government; and
the pursuit of “a sustainable, equitable and pro-Filipino development
program centered on genuine agrarian reform and national
industrialization.” Meanwhile, Renato Reyes, Jr. of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan or New Patriotic Alliance) announced that ACCOUNT will be employing Various forms of protest against the proposed revenue measures, among them rallies, noise and text barrages, and lobbying. Bulatlat We want to know what you think of this article.
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