Solon seeks cash grants, tax relief to Boracay residents, businesses

A lawmaker has filed a bill seeking cash grants and tax relief to Boracay residents, workers and businesses in a bid to ease the economic pain brought by the six-month closure of the renowned island.

1-CARE Rep. Carlos Uybarreta filed House Bill 8537 last Oct. 30 to seek a “one-time allowable extraordinary operating loss deduction equivalent to 50 percent of audited operating losses incurred in the taxable year 2018” in businesses in Boracay and in the Municipalities of Malay and Caticlan in the Province of Aklan.

In a statement on Monday, Uybarreta stressed that tax relief for businesses, residents, and workers in Boracay and surrounding areas “has become even more necessary” now that it has become clear that tourist arrivals will be limited to Boracay’s so-called “carrying capacity” and with new inspections processes government agencies put in place.

According to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Boracay has a “carrying capacity of 19,000 tourists per day or about 55,000 people including residents, workers, and tourists.”

Meanwhile, the Department of Tourism has accredited only 157 establishments in Boracay with total combined rooms of 7,300.

“With all these limitations, the financial health of Boracay businesses, employees, and residents will certainly be troubled this year and in 2019. Giving them urgent tax relief will ease the pain they are suffering,” the lawmaker said.

The congressman added that the proposed “Boracay Cleanup Shutdown Assistance and Ecological Sustainability Act” also provides cash grants for resident households or families of Boracay Island and the Municipalities of Malay and Caticlan.

Uybarreta said under HB 8537, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) would be tasked to extend a special monthly cash grant in the following amounts:

a) P700 for every household member of families already enrolled in the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) of the DSWD;

b) P500 for every household member of families not enrolled in the 4Ps of the DSWD, but whose income are derived purely from monthly compensation income of less than P20,000.

Under the bill, funding for the Pantawid Cash Grants would come from the President’s Social Fund, 1 percent of the lotto income of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, and from taxes the national government earned from the implementation of Republic Act 10963.

HB 8537 also creates a Boracay Ecological Sustainability Fund to be jointly administered by a Council made up of the Secretary of Tourism, Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources, the chief executives of the barangays of Boracay Island and the municipalities of Malay and Caticlan of the Province of Aklan, and representatives of the local business and civil society sectors.

The fund aims to partly finance the Boracay-Malay-Caticlan Sustainability Master Plan formulated and approved by the Fund Council.

The funding for the Boracay Ecological Sustainability Fund will then come from a P20 Boracay Sustainability Fee which will be paid by every passenger of airlines and passenger ships traveling to and from Boracay, Caticlan, or Malay, once the bill is enacted into law. /cbb