House, Senate inclined to review economic provisions of Constitution

Leaders of the two chambers of Congress are inclined to push for a review of the economic provisions of the Constitution to allow the country to get a bigger chunk of foreign investments and become more globally competitive.

Speaking at the Philippine Business Conference last week, House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. said this was as good a time as any to review the economic provisions of the Constitution considering how the world was getting smaller and smaller.

“There are calls to review the economic provisions of the Constitution, to try to amend them. Even if [President Aquino] is not in favor of it, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and I will dialogue with him,” Belmonte said in his speech.

He said that during the recent Legislative Summit of the two houses of Congress, the proposal to relax restrictive ownership provisions in the Constitution was discussed.

These provisions, he said, could be restraining the country’s growth potential.

“Reviewing these restrictions on ownership in land, public utilities and corporate capitalization has become an imperative in a world economy where capital and investment are very mobile,” Belmonte said.

“An earnest study of proposals to relax these economic restrictions in our Constitution as a way of enhancing our national competitiveness is, at this juncture, not only timely, it is also critical to our collective future. I, therefore, invite each of you to participate, and indeed take sides, in this most important debate, bearing in mind that in the present globalized and highly competitive world economy, national policy must carefully strike a balance between the ends of nationalization and the creation of opportunity and jobs for a great majority of our people,” he further said.

Trade Undersecretary Cristino Panlilio had earlier said that the Department of Trade and Industry was studying measures to remove certain restrictions on foreign entities, particularly in the area of operation of public utilities.

One of the measures that the DTI was looking at, he said, had to do with operations of some public-private partnership projects by foreign entities.

Under Article 12 Section 11 of the Constitution, the operation of public utilities can only be done by Filipino firms. Foreign control will be restricted to shareholdings alone and only up to 40 percent of total capital.

Panlilio explained that to make the government’s PPP projects more attractive to foreign firms, the ban on operations could be removed.

Whatever law or rule amendments would be necessary to implement such a measure would be coursed through the Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council or through an executive order, he said.