Group pushes for alternative stimulus program to address COVID-19 crisis

A civil society organization on Thursday pushed for an alternative stimulus program to help the country recover from the COVID-19 crisis.

Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) president Rene Ofreneo said during a virtual press briefing that the recovery program should channel funds and resources into people’s immediate needs for survival such as food and medicine.

Upgrading communities should be done through “holistic" resilience building programs, he added.

The FDC also reiterated its proposal to impose a wealth tax on rich Filipinos or those with an annual net worth of at least more than P100 million.

“Change gears and reverse technocratic thinking that to save the country government must go to foreign investment, must go to big business, [and] to big lenders based on trickle-down economics,” said Ofreneo, a former dean of the University of the Philippines School of Labor and Industrial Relations.

“But have they not been doing this even before COVID-19 without succeeding in correcting mass poverty, mass unemployment/underemployment, and mass misery?”

Speaker Lord Allan Velasco has proposed a third Bayanihan law, outlining P420 billion worth of interventions to further help stimulate the country's economic recovery amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

A version of Bayanihan 3 proposed by Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto comes with a P485-billion appropriation for various government interventions.

Both bills' budget requirements are bigger compared to the earlier Bayanihan to Heal as One and Bayanihan to Recover as One laws which came with P389.2 billion and P165.5 billion, respectively. --KBK, GMA News