Power...

Continued from A1 the power sector. Lotilla said the call for greater RE use is being intensified with policies geared towards achieving the government’s target of increasing 35 percent of RE in the power generation mix by 2030 and 50 percent by 2040.

“As you know, the power and energy sector in the Philippines is in private hands. Therefore, the role of government is to support the initiatives of the private sector,” he noted.

So far, he said, the department “has approved 126 service contracts in RE in the one year of the Marcos administration. This represents around 31,000 MW. But RE, as you know, is site specific and therefore connectivity is at the core of RE. We have to connect the source to the market.”

The DOE reported that eight new generation facilities became operational from July 2022 to June 2023, increasing the country’s installed capacity by 930.8MW and dependable capacity by 801.6 MW.

Additional capacities from the uprating of existing power plants also contributed to the increase in installed capacity totaling 1,174 MW. On the other hand, the depend-

Neda...

Continued from A1 offers little reason to cheer, as this growth masks the increased underlying precarity in the labor market,” Oxford Economics said.

Nonetheless, Balisacan said the Philippines has “no reason” to fail in its bid to create decent jobs this time around because the government is led by a popular president and the administration has a clear development program.

Balisacan added that there is a collaboration between the government, the private sector and the academe that makes the whole-ofsociety approach in development possible in the country.

If these are achieved, Balisacan said the government can reduce poverty to 9 percent by 2028. This means that by 2028, when the population may reach 120 million, over 10 million Filipinos will be lifted from poverty.

However, Balisacan admitted

Asian Nations on Myanmar.

The consensus aims to prevent further bloodshed in Myanmar amid its ongoing civil war after its military ousted the civilian government in 2021.

Both Ibrahim and Marcos agreed that Myanmar should be given the “flexibility” to engage with its neighboring countries on an informal basis without sacrificing the issues on human rights and the treatment of minorities, in particular Rohingya people.

“We also agreed that we can explore not only along multilateral lines, all of the issues that are facing us in the region, but also that there is use as well, there is utility as well in us promoting a bilateral relationship, especially between Malaysia and the Philippines and our other partners in Asean,” Marcos said. The chief executive thanked Ibrahim, Malaysia’s King Al-Sultan Abdullah and Queen Azizah, as well as the Malaysian people for the warm welcome they gave him and other members of the Philippine delegation.

“skilled, reskilled, and upskilled.” able capacity increased by 1,764 MW due to the return of the service of the Ilijan power plant, dependable capacity of which was considered zero since June 2022.

Their goal is to have around 300,000 Tesda enrollees and graduates, in order to promote employability.

As of now, they are trying to operate a Tesda online program with 150 programs, which is targeted to Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW).

“We want to really engage the industry in the business of training and development,” said Urdaneta.

Meanwhile, the Philippine Independent Power Producers Association Inc. (Pippa) pledged support to the President’s declared priorities, such as the relentless pursuit of total electrification, the accelerated green energy goal, and the push for more gas exploration on a national scale.

“Pippa takes this opportunity to appreciate the unrelenting efforts of the Department of Energy that have unlocked some bottlenecks, thus making it possible to not only have new power plants, but more significantly, 126 RE contracts with a potential total capacity of 31,000MW,” it said.

It vowed to keep working “with our policy makers and regulators in helping ensure that the energy transition will include mechanisms that will assist existing industry players to make the transition.”

It sought support of the DOE and the Energy Regulatory Commission “as we undertake efforts and commit significant investments in the field of new technologies and/or fuel sources, such as energy storage, LNG [liquefied natural gas], hydrogen, ammonia, and a lot of other possibilities.” that inflation remains a concern. This is particularly because inflation can reduce incomes and prevent poor households from improving their lives.

It may be noted that poor Filipinos are sensitive to expensive food items. Based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI), food has a weight of 51.38 percent of the CPI for the Bottom 30 percent of the population.

This is significantly higher than the 34.78 percent weight of food in the CPI for all households. This only shows that because of their low incomes, poor Filipinos spend more of what little they have on food.

“I’m still expecting a reduction, but because of elevated inflation, the effects of economic growth [on poverty] might have been dampened a bit by the inflation. Usually, when inflation is low and economic growth is high, the rate of poverty decreasing is faster,” Balisacan explained, partly in Filipino.

“This time, 2023, and the latter half of 2022, inflation was rising not updated MVUC rates there since 2004, not to mention our excise tax exemptions on pick-up trucks,” he added.

“This state visit not only attests to the importance we place on Malaysia as a neighbor and as a partner in Asean, but also reaffirms the Philippines’s commitment to further cultivating our bonds and friendship especially as we look forward to celebrating our 60th anniversary of formal diplomatic relations with Malaysia next year,” Marcos said. The President started his visit by meeting with the Filipinos in Malaysia on Tuesday, a day after delivering his second State of the Nation Address. He is scheduled to conclude his three-day stay in Malaysia on Thursday after meeting with Malaysian businessmen.

Salceda said that e-commerce is also expected to grow by as much as 22.9 percent this year, and a lot of those sales are escaping taxes due to de minimis rules in customs and “that we aren’t fully making ecommerce sites withholding agents for VAT yet.”

“That’s why you need to keep evolving your tax system as the economy changes or evolves. Otherwise, it outpaces you, and you don’t capture the revenues you need to support economic growth,” Salceda added.

“Definitely, PBBM needs the fiscal space. That means new tax items. We can’t rely on tax administration alone. No amount of tax administration improvements will capture taxes on new and emerging sectors not contemplated by the Tax Code,” Salceda added.

Jovee Marie N. Dela Cruz and the pandemic also made inflation and prices elevated. That’s what’s dampening [the impact of] economic recovery on poverty,” he added.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) earlier said inflation would continue to slow to 2.9 percent next year, which is within the target range of 2 percent to 4 percent. Inflation has already eased to 5.4 percent in June 2023.

Neda reiterated that rapid, sustained, and inclusive economic growth is key to achieving the Marcos Administration’s single-digit poverty incidence target by 2028.

The government targets a gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 6.0-7.0 percent in 2023, and aims for a faster expansion of 6.58.0 percent from 2024 to 2028.

However, while GDP growth performance of 7.6 percent in 2022 and the 6.4 percent recorded in the first quarter of 2023 mark a return to the country’s high-growth norm, Balisacan cited the need to ensure that such growth is sustained and inclusive.

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Editor: Vittorio V. Vitug