CREATE to be ratified Tuesday — Salceda

The bicameral conference committee has agreed to ratify the second package of tax reforms or the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises (CREATE) will be ratified within the next 24 hours, a lawmaker said Monday.

House Ways and Means chair and Albay 2nd District representative Joey Sarte Salceda said CREATE will be ratified by the Senate on Tuesday, February 02, following the ratification in the House on Monday afternoon.

"This will be the greatest economic reform of the post-EDSA years, second only to economic amendments to the Constitution. Removing the uncertainty will be like opening the floodgates to investment," he said in a statement.

Salceda in December pushed for the adoption of the Senate version of the bill, which lowers the corporate income tax rate from the current 30%, with progressive rates applied -- 25% for large corporations, and 20% for small and medium establishments (SMEs).

"I expect at least P12 trillion in combined domestic and foreign investment over the next decade due to CREATE alone. $90 billion of that will be [foreign direct investments]... This is will also result in around 1.8 million jobs over the next 10 years," he said.

"Combined with economic amendments to the constitution to maximize impact, we can produce some 8.4 million jobs," he added, as he said the measure also addressed concerns of uncertainty over the country's fiscal regime.

Salceda said CREATE will result in P931 billion in tax savings for businesses, which will frontload relief and cover the economic gap brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the bicameral version shaving off P282 billion from the original revenue loss under the Senate version.

"With CREATE, we are also lowering corporate income tax to bring it closer to the ASEAN region’s average. ASEAN has been the fastest growing economic region in the world. Our neighbors are our friends, but they are also our competitors. We must strive to keep up with them," he said. — Jon Viktor D. Cabuenas/RSJ, GMA News