EO to provide budget for e-jeepney makers

Trade and Industry Secretary Ramon Lopez (File photo by GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE / Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Malacañang needs to issue an executive order (EO) to provide a budget for a support program that would encourage the local production of modern jeepneys, Trade and Industry Secretary Ramon Lopez said.

Lopez said in a recent interview that the department was initially hoping the support program would be approved prior to the implementation of the PUV modernization scheme.

Spearheaded by the Department of Transportation, the modernization program wants to replace more than 200,000 public utility vehicles (PUVs) across the country. For its part, the Board of Investments (BOI), an attached agency under the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), is supposed to come up with a program to grant incentives to companies that will make the modernized jeepneys.

However, given Duterte’s directive to start the phaseout in January next year, the support program of BOI—which would have helped create economies of scale and thus lessen cost — would just enter later into the picture.

“We need a new EO so that we can get a budget as a support for the local manufacturing [of eco-friendly PUVs] so that the body builders [of these units] would be encouraged,” he said in a mix of English and Filipino.

He did not say when the executive order would be released. Until now, there are still no definite guidelines for BOI’s manufacturing solution although a number of players in the automotive industry have expressed interested to join it.

“We were hoping that this support program would be approved first before the modernization scheme gets implemented. But then again, these are two separate components and the modernization could start anytime,” he said.

Officials often compared this to the Comprehensive Automotive Resurgence Strategy (CARS) Program, a P27-billion government initiative that would pick three car manufacturers to locally produce a combined 600,000 units within a six-year period.

Only two car manufacturers qualified for the program, market leaders Toyota Motor Philippines Corp. and Mitsubishi Motors Philippines Corp. Lopez previously said that the P9-billion budget for the unused third slot would be used for the manufacturing scheme of eco-friendly PUVs.

The Bureau of Philippine Standards, also a DTI-attached agency, approved earlier this year two classes of PUVs as a Philippine National Standard for the PUV modernization program. These are Class 2, which can carry more than 22 seated and standing passengers, and Class 3, which can carry more than 22 all seated passengers. These were selected from four classes of vehicles.