Laws passed seen to have impact on Filipino lives

Congress in 2023 passed several priority bills of the administration of President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. 

Five of those which are expected to impact the lives of Filipinos are the following: 

1. New Agrarian Reform Emancipation Act

The New Agrarian Reform Emancipation Act condones and writes off more than P57 billion worth of debt of agrarian reform beneficiaries due to unpaid amortizations, interest, penalties, and surcharges arising from the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform program and other agrarian reform programs and laws.  

In addition, the law requires the Department of Agrarian Reform to issue a Notice of Condonation to be annotated to the Emancipation Patents and Certificates of Land Ownership Award (CLOA).  

The law prohibits the sale, transfer, or conveyance of awarded lands to another except through hereditary succession or be the subject of conversion, for 10 years from the issuance of the CLOA. 

Its authors included the three opposition lawmakers from the Makabayan bloc: House Minority Leader France Castro of the ACT Teachers party list, House Assistant Minority Leader Arlene Brosas of Gabriela, and Raoul Manuel of Kabataan party-list.  

“As one of the authors of the New Agrarian Reform Emancipation Act, in the short term, I see that it would boost the earnings of farmers and increase their productivity. [But] condoning loans of farmers, which is long overdue...it should not stop there. The next move should be to go after vast tracts of agricultural lands that are owned and controlled by private landholdings that were exempted from the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law, like haciendas or lands that were converted,” Castro told GMA News Online in a text message.  

Castro called on President Marcos to issue a moratorium on agricultural land conversion by Executive Order (EO) and nullify previous EO easing the requirements for land conversion.   

 “If these measures are done, alongside agricultural production support and subsidies, then the farmers can start producing more crops and we can be on our way to food self-sufficiency,” Castro added.  

2. Maharlika Investment Fund Law

The Maharlika Investment Fund law establishes a sovereign wealth fund from the resources of state-run corporations, as well as Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR), and other authorized sources, for investment ventures and ultimately to increase public funds for nation-building.

The Land Bank of the Philippines (LandBank) and the Development Bank of the Philippines are mandated to contribute to the MIF while the fund is managed by the Maharlika Investment Corporation. “We are confident foreign investors and companies will consider investing in our own sovereign fund, and they have expressed keen interest in doing so in our dialogues with them during President Marcos’s trips abroad,” Speaker Martin Romualdez told GMA News Online on why the administration was confident that the MIF would gain ground in terms of investments.

“The President is the country’s best salesman. He assures investors that their money will be safe with our sovereign fund,” he added.   

The Speaker, however, admitted that the bulk of the funding for the government’s priority projects, especially for social services, would still be mainly sourced from the annual national budget because the investment yields will take time.    

“As for funding for social services from the Maharlika Investment Fund, that will come when our sovereign fund makes enough income that it can remit part of it to the national government as budgetary support. For now, the principal source of funding for social services like education and health is the annual national budget,” Romualdez said.   

 “We will continue to appropriate enough funds in the budget to meet the social service and infrastructure requirements of our people,” he added. 

Nueva Ecija Rep. Ria Vergara, the chairperson of the House Committee on Social Services, said the country’s BBB+ credit rating from S&P Global Fitch Rating and the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth during the third quarter of the year increasing to 5.9% from 4.3% three months back should inspire confidence among potential Maharlika wealth investors.  

“Coupled with the limitations and safeguards placed by the law to ensure that the fund adheres to good governance, transparency, and accountability as intended by the law, I am positive that private financial institutions and corporations will be comfortable in investing in the MIF,” Vergara told GMA News Online.  

Vergara said the MIF law provides that all investment activities must be within the specified allowable list, that all documents pertaining to the investments are subject to the public’s right to freedom of information, and that the investment policies, guidelines, strategies, and activities are also to be made available to the public.   

She said the House of Representatives and Senate heeded the public’s concerns over the proposed MIF and removed two pension funds repository Government Service Insurance System and Social Security System as sources of funding.   

“These provisions make the MIF’s probability of success high and the risk, which is inevitable in every wealth fund whether it be sovereign or private-owned, be more controlled, more manageable, and sounder,” Vergara said.  

In the event that the MIF achieves its objective, the lawmaker said the funds should be used in government programs and infrastructure for the agriculture sector such as, but not limited to, building irrigation facilities, and investing in farming innovation and technology.  

 “These will not only help resolve the present challenges in stabilizing food prices and ensuring availability of supply of agricultural products but would also improve our country’s production capabilities, therefore strengthening our food security and removing our dependence on imports,” Vergara said. 

3. Public-Private Partnership Code 

The PPP Code states clearer and simplified government regulations aimed at ensuring faster implementation of crucial government infrastructure projects which are cost-efficient through the following provisions:

 allowing local government units to undertake their PPP projects without limit on costs, provided there is no similar national government undertaking 

the national government’s PPP project worth less than P15 billion will be approved at the level of the PPP Center, unless such approval is overturned by the Investment Coordination Committee of the National Economic and Development Authority (ICC-NEDA) 

projects costing above P15 billion, on the other hand, will be approved by the NEDA Board, upon prior recommendation by the ICC-NEDA. 

House Committee on Ways and Means chairperson and Albay lawmaker Joey Salceda, one of the principal authors of the measure, said the passage of the PPP Code is a move towards a rules-based, transparent, and efficient governance that would cover as much as P23 trillion infrastructure investment gap of the country.  

“We expressly empowered any and all government agencies and instrumentalities to undertake PPPs. We raised the threshold for NEDA-ICC approval to P15 billion, and for local government units whose PPPs do not require any national government undertaking, the sky's the limit,” Salceda said after Marcos signed the bill into law this month.     

The same PPP Code also states that the original proponent status is only good for one year upon acceptance by the agency. The comparative challenge, on the other hand, will be valid within 90 days to one year, with 30 days right to match.  

Salceda said the PPP Code established a more competitive process for solicited proposals by explicitly defining the winning bid as the “most responsive bid.”

“The new PPP Code does not suffer from longstanding defects of ambiguity. It is clearly specified which undertakings are not allowed. The process is outlined,” Salceda added. 

4. The Regional Specialty Centers Act

The Regional Specialty Centers Act aims to establish centers in Department of Health hospitals, as well as government-owned and controlled medical facilities in every region, which will focus on specialized medical treatment.

These regional specialty centers will offer the following: 

• cardiovascular care
• renal care and transplant center
• lung care
• cancer care
• brain and spine care
• neonatal care
• burn care
• geriatric care
• trauma care
• eye care
• mental health
• dermatology care
• toxicology
• orthopedic center
• physical rehabilitation medicine
• infectious diseases and tropical medicine.

Senator Bong Go, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health and principal sponsor of the bill, said the law would bring essential specialty medical services closer to Filipinos, especially the indigent patients living outside Metro Manila where most, if not all, of the national specialty centers are found.

This will likewise help in decongesting the existing national specialty centers like the National Center for Mental Health in Mandaluyong City, the Philippine Heart Center and the National Kidney and Transplant Institute which are both located in Quezon City.

Go said Congress deemed it wise not to put up new regional specialty hospitals, which was a “more expensive approach.” 

Citing the Department of Health’s data, Go said the estimated total cost for the law's implementation from 2024 to 2028 is at P76 billion which will be sourced mainly from the annual General Appropriations Act.

“Being a multi-year goal, Congress will be allocating annually the necessary funding for these regional specialty centers. For the fiscal year 2024, Congress approved the initial P10-billion fund for the establishment of these centers in DOH hospitals,” Go told GMA News Online.

Since there are already existing specialty centers in several government hospitals like the Southern Philippines Medical Center, Go said the government should endeavor to develop, upgrade, and bring such services to other existing regional hospitals around the country.

Senate Majority Leader Joel Villanueva said Congress is committed to allocate enough funding for this law despite the very limited resources of the government.

 “Although the government's annual funding is small to realize all of our aspirations as a nation, we make sure every budget cycle that the government's scarce resources will be able to help the most people,” Villanueva told GMA News Online.

5. Internet Transactions Act

After the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns prompted Filipinos to rely on online transactions, Congress pushed for a measure that will protect them from wasting their hard-earned money to bogus online sellers.

Republic Act 11967 or the Internet Transactions Act seeks to boost the country’s digital economy by protecting consumers from online scammers.

Sen. Joel Villanueva said the purpose of the law is to ease the burden in filing complaints against scammers or fraudulent online sellers.

 “According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, in 2022, 9.4% of our GDP came from digital economy and during the height of the pandemic, we really saw the potential of this sector to help grow our economy, create jobs, and boost productivity, especially of MSMEs,” Villanueva told GMA News Online.

 “We hope that the impact of this law will be felt immediately, even though we are still in the transition period of 18 months for online merchants to fully comply with the provisions of the law,” he added.

Under the law, an E-Commerce Bureau will be established under the Department of Trade and Industry.

Apart from formulating policies and programs to ensure the robust and dynamic development of e-commerce, the bureau is also tasked to receive and refer business and consumer complaints on internet transactions to the appropriate government agency.

32 measures signed

Two years into the 19th Congress, Marcos had already signed 32 laws produced by the House of Representatives and the Senate.

 “All of these measures were carefully crafted to benefit Filipinos and the nation. A majority of these new laws are what the administration of President Marcos Jr. laid down either in his latest SONA or in the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council or LEDAC,” Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri said.

Before 2023 ends, there are 29 bills that are awaiting Marcos’ signature, including the “No Permit, No Exam” bill, measure expanding the Centenarians Act of 2016, proposed New Passport Law, Magna Carta of Filipino Seafarers, Ease of Paying Taxes bill, measure strengthening and revitalizing the salt industry in the Philippines, and the Tatak Pinoy bill. —LDF/NB/RSJ, GMA Integrated News