The economic state of the Philippines will not be affected negatively as the country shifts from a unitary to a federal form of government, Malaca\u00f1ang said.<\/p>\n
This assurance came after Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia warned that regions in the country are not ready for the transition and that rushing the implementation of federalism could disrupt infrastructure programs and cause government fund deficits.<\/p>\n
Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque Jr. said that the said concern has already been discussed with Pernia.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe shift to federalism, we reiterate, would have no adverse effect on the Philippine economy,\u201d the president\u2019s spokesman said.<\/p>\n
As for the\u00a0claim that that the government\u2019s budget will be affected, Roque said the \u201cidentified national projects would be devolved and transferred to the internal revenue allotment (IRA) of local government units\u201d which means the budget \u201cwill remain the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
With this, the local government will have projects including – maintenance of barangay roads and bridges, water supply services, barangay health centers and daycare centers, solid waste disposal system of municipalities, and more, Roque said.<\/p>\n
He added that in this new set-up, the national government can \u201cconcentrate on policy-making\u201d and will \u201ccontinue to implement the Build, Build, Build program.\u201d<\/p>\n
(DAILY NEWS ROUND UP FOR 07\/ 19 \/18)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The economic state of the Philippines will not be affected negatively as the country shifts from a unitary to a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":114184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uncategorized","mauthors-ro-angelica-equio","mauthors-philippine-canadian-inquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}