Thursday, February 22, 2007 Export body to resolve kinks over P280M promotions fund
THE executive committee of the Export Development Council (EDC) will have to resolve this week the issue on what particular projects will qualify and who will manage the multimillion-peso export promotions fund (EPF).
The EDC executive committee meeting was set on February 23 to refine and approve the system of administering the fund and pinpoint the agency of government that will have to administer it.
In an agreement signed recently, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Department of Budget Management (DBM) pledged to put in P100 each for the initial seed fund. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) committed P50 million, the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) - P20 million and the Philippine Exporters Confederation (Philexport) - P10 million.
The total was P280 million.
The pooled fund was set up in response to a long-awaited clamor by exporters for government to support the country s export promotions campaign which was mainly shouldered by the exporters themselves.
Token government funding was particularly true in the past three years when the National Government operated on reenacted budgets without increased allocations because of the repeated failure of Congress to approve annual budgets.
A new national budget for 2007 of over P1 trillion was recently approved by both houses of Congress.
As of presstime, project proposals submitted to the EDC for funding from the different export industry associations already exceeded the seed fund pledged by the different agencies.
It was learned that although EDC was specifically mandated in the agreement to manage the EPF, it could only process the papers based on the priority programs under the Export Development Plan, oversee the implementation of funded projects and monitor results. Another government office needs to handle the actual safe-keeping and disbursement of the fund.
Another issue that is expected to be resolved is the rule on what particular projects can be funded. (Philexport News and Features/Sunnex)
