More tourism infra sought
CAMARINES Sur Rep. Lray Villafuerte has decried the apparent bungling of government efforts to bail out the tourism industry—one of the domestic sectors hardest hit by the prolonged pandemic—as he called on the Congress to pry into a Commission on Audit (CoA) discovery that P4.99 billion or over half the financial aid set aside for tourism-related businesses under the Bayanihan to Recover as One Act (Bayanihan 2) were never used by the intended beneficiaries.
“Agencies in-charge of implementing a rescue package for tourism MSMEs (micro, small and medium-size enterprises) have apparently bungled their job of providing succor to this sector badly-hit by the mobility restrictions to contain Covid-19 and nurse this industry to a quick and strong recovery from the pandemic,” said Villafuerte, who was the principal author in the House of both Bayanihan 2 and the Bayanihan to Heal as One (Bayanihan 1) Act.
“Congress should get to the bottom of this CoA discovery that almost half the amount intended to rescue tourism MSMEs remained idle till Bayanihan 2’s extended effectivity lapsed in June last year, mainly because of SBC (Small Business Corp.)’s supposedly inadequate staff to process loan applications and the hesitancy of potential beneficiaries to secure loans to revive their businesses,” said Villafuerte, who was also an author of the law that extended the effectivity of Bayanihan 2 for six months into 2021.
“It was obviously a case of wrong or misguided priorities as tourism and other concerned authorities had lobbied for the funneling of the entire multibillion-peso rescue package for loans to tourism-related MSMEs, rather than devote the amount or a part of it to building tourism service infrastructure—in preparation for the eventual reopening of the domestic economy in general and the tourism industry in particular,” Villafuerte said.
Villafuerte said the House leadership under then-Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano had tucked a P10-billion budget for the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA) in the House-passed version of Bayanihan 2 for building tourism infrastructure to sharpen the country’s competitiveness as a tourist destination and provide temporary but immediate jobs for many of the displaced workers from this industry.
“Such tourism infrastructure would have been up by now—and ready for the reopening of our economy and tourism industry—as such facilities could be built in six months to a year at the most,” he said.
“But sadly, our concerned officials thought otherwise,” he said, “and lobbied the Senate to do away with this infra allocation, leading to the final congressional version of Bayanihan 2 that had a P10-billion outlay but which was allotted to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)-attached SBC for loans to tourism-related MSMEs.”
“And this brings us now,” he said, “to this P4.9 billion in idle SBC funds that has been flagged by the COA,” whose auditors said in their COA report that “these unutilized funds could have been used to fund other emergency measures to address the effects of the pandemic.”
Villafuerte said what had made the fund mishandling worse was that the objection to the original budgetary allocation for TIEZA was rooted in the reported feud between DOT and TIEZA officials, “which meant that the P10-billion budget for tourism infrastructure was simply waylaid by office or bureaucratic politics.”
He said the almost P5 billion in unused SBC funds had reverted to the National Treasury as provided by law, and could no longer be used for either MSME loans or tourism infrastructure.
However, he said, “it’s better late than never, and the government could still switch to catch-up mode by augmenting the infrastructure funds of TIEZA in the 2022 national budget and in the proposed 2023 General Appropriations Act (GAA) to improve and increase our tourism services infrastructure as a way to sharpen the country’s competitive edge as a tourism haven.”
