CORDILLERAN representatives of the consultative commission (ConCom) tasked to review the 1987 constitution created under Executive Order no.10 by President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016 sees a higher funding for the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) once it becomes a state under a federal form of government.
During the Baguio leg of the Regional Consultation on Federalism, ConCom member Dr. Virgilio Bautista explained that compared to the present, Cordillera will have a bigger share in the allotment of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) which would come from the national budget.
“The issue on the distribution of funds based on our computations is that we will have a much bigger funding as a federal region. How much it would be, we still could not divulge because we still have to get the correct data from the national but we would like to assure especially those in the local government units that their funding will not be diminished because from what we are seeing, there is a bigger budget,” Bautista said.
Based on the present GDP data presented by the constitutional commission, CAR has a 1.82 share in the GDP having a poverty rate of 22.6 percent.
NCR, Calabarzon and Central Luzon receive 62.04 percent of the GDP.
“The difficulty that we have encountered is the setup of the Bureau of Internal Revenue having district representation which does not follow the political districts that we have. And what was being distributed before on the 60/40 share was only income, it did not include the other sources of income of the government. However this time, we are asking for a higher percentage and not only 40 percent but even higher. We want to get more from the bigger pie,” the ConCom representative stated.
Under federalism, it would empower the 18 regions having a proposed system applicable to their area. Funds, policies, programs, projects are well distributed between the national government and the federal states.
It also aims to break the three monopolies of power particularly on political dynasties, businesses and the administrative and fiscal monopoly by the central unitary government.
“The idea here is that when we become a federated region, we now manage the funds allocated to us. The other thing that we are still tweaking is once we collect taxes from various businesses in the region, will it be restrained here? Based on our proposal, any collection which is due to us should be retained while the difference is what would be given to the national,” Dr. Bautista added.
Under a federal form of government, federal regions will have exclusive and shared powers with the federal government. The power to collect certain taxes that are at present being collected by the national government to ensure source of revenues include capital gains tax, donors tax, documentary stamp tax, transport franchise fees, vehicle registration (road users tax) and licenses among others.