The Department of Trade and Industry will try to get Congress and the Department of Budget and Management to provide a fund to help exporters who are struggling to compete on the world stage.
In an interview Thursday, Trade Secretary Gregory Domingo said the revival of the export support fund (ESF), which was put in place in 2008 to help keep domestic industries afloat at the height of the global recession, hinged on whether or not the government could allocate a budget for it.
“We will try to ask again for money, but this will depend on the DBM and Congress. We’ll propose it, but whether or not it can be funded is another thing,” Domingo told reporters at the sidelines of the Communications and News Exchange Forum on Thursday.
Domingo said that while the DTI wanted to help exporters become more competitive, the ESF was not meant to be a perpetual subsidy.
“The concept of the ESF is to support products that are temporarily disadvantaged or have long-term potential for growth. It’s not supposed to be a permanent subsidy because that will make our local industries end up uncompetitive. It’s just meant to jump-start (operations of exporting firms),” he explained.
“If some industries are trying to cope with costs that will always be there—that will always be high—then they shouldn’t be subsidized because it will not compel them to boost their competitiveness. We’ll have to study our local industries more closely.”
Should the ESF be revived, he said more stringent criteria would have to be set to determine the recipients of the government aid. The rules governing its disbursement and use would likewise have to be tighter.
Late last year, Export Development Council executive director Senen Perlada expressed hope that the ESF would be made a permanent line item of the government budget.