Will Arroyo be DOF secretary next year? ‘That’s so hypothetical,’ she says

House Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (File Photo by GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE / Philippine Daily Inquirer)

House Speaker Gloria Arroyo on Tuesday described as “so hypothetical” the rumors that she was eyeing the Finance secretary post when her third and last term as Pampanga representative ends next year.

After attending the House ways and means committee hearing on the Department of Finance’s (DOF) proposed tax reform package covering the capital markets, the Inquirer asked Arroyo during an ambush interview that since she was being rumored to be DOF chief next year, will she accept the position if offered to her?

Her reply: “That’s so hypothetical.”

The Finance secretary is in charge of the country’s fiscal health, including taxation policies, borrowings, as well as debt payments.

When asked by another publication about rumors on Arroyo possibly replacing him as the Duterte administation’s top economic manager, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez replied: “Really? How interesting.”

Upon assuming the post of House Speaker after that much talked-about power play that happened right before President Rodrigo Duterte delivered his second State of the Nation Address, Arroyo was present in the ways and means committee hearings tackling the remaining tax reform packages, which the President had wanted to all pass before yearend.

A known economist, the former president was also an economics professor at the Ateneo de Manila University as well as assistant secretary at the Department of Trade and Industry.

Dominguez, meanwhile, was being rumored to be the next Executive Secretary.

Last month, some quarters sought Dominguez’s resignation for his supposed failure to solve corruption in the DOF-attached Bureau of Customs (BOC) and of Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), the country’s two biggest tax-collection agencies. /jpv

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