President Duterte’s 10-point socioeconomic agenda:

1. Continuing and maintaining current macroeconomic policies, including fiscal, monetary and trade policies;

2. Instituting progressive tax reform and more effective tax collection while indexing taxes to inflation;

3. Increasing competitiveness and the ease of doing business, drawing upon successful models used to attract business to local cities such as Davao, as well as pursuing the relaxation of the Constitutional restrictions on foreign ownership, except with regards to land ownership, in order to attract foreign direct investments;

4. Accelerating annual infrastructure spending to account for 5 percent of the gross domestic product, with public-private partnerships playing a key role;

5. Promoting rural and value chain development toward increasing agricultural and rural enterprise productivity and rural tourism;

6. Ensuring security of land tenure to encourage investments and address bottlenecks in land management and titling agencies;

7. Investing in human capital development, including health and education systems, as well as matching skills and training to meet the demands of businesses and the private sector;

8. Promoting science, technology and the creative arts to enhance innovation and creative capacity toward self-sustaining and inclusive development;

9. Improving social protection programs, including the government’s conditional cash transfer program, in order to protect the poor against instability and economic shocks; and

10. Strengthening the implementation of the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Law to enable especially poor couples to make informed choices on financial and family planning.

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TAGS: fiscal policies, monetary policies, President Duterte, Rodrigo Duterte, socioeconomic agenda, tax reform