MANILA, Philippines — Senator Imee Marcos is eyeing to boost the local production of personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers and other frontliners through certain tax exemptions to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign-made medical supplies.
Marcos, chair of the Senate committee on economic affairs, has filed Senate Bill 1708 or the proposed Healthcare Manufacturing and Pandemic Protection Act, to exempt local manufacturers of PPEs from certain taxes and continue applying export incentives even on their products made for domestic consumption.
“We need to guarantee that our health workers and frontliners have the medical supplies they require. Shortages of PPEs and other requisites caused infections resulting in the inexcusably high death toll among doctors, nurses, and other frontliners,” she said in a statement.
Marcos noted that at the onset of the pandemic, the country was unable to procure supplies from China, Singapore, Japan, and Korea, which at the time were struggling against the virus as well. She said the Philippines could not bid against the United States and Europe which were understandably paying top dollar for the same supplies.
“Clearly, what we need to do is to finally establish health security or, at the very least, PPE security, by producing these supplies locally, initiating the stockpiling of their raw materials and encouraging repurposing and innovation among willing Filipino manufacturers,” Marcos also said.
Under the bill, local manufacturers will not need to pay import duties on raw materials and equipment, value-added taxes, and other fees collected by the Bureau of Customs and Food and Drug Administration.
Incentives will also be maintained for export manufacturers even if most of the medical supplies they produce will go to the Department of Health and private local hospitals.
According to Marcos, waiving export requirements during a crisis and crediting output for local needs will allow a major industry like the garments industry to preserve jobs and even to expand.
“During health emergencies, we should give priority to local manufacturers when the government needs to procure PPE and other medical supplies. But their production capacities must be strengthened first,” she said.
“We can still expand our present capacity which the DTI has pegged at 300,000 PPEs per month. Controversy over the alleged overpricing of imported PPEs will also be avoided in the future,” she added.