Senator Ma. Imelda Josefa “Imee” R. Marcos has sought to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign-made medical supplies by boosting their local production, especially of personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers and other frontliners.
Ms. Marcos, who chairs the Senate committee on economic affairs,
has filed Senate Bill 1708, or the “Healthcare Manufacturing and Pandemic
Protection Act,” to exempt local manufacturers from certain taxes and continue
applying export incentives even on their output 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,” Ms. Marcos explained.
“At the onset of the pandemic, we were unable to procure supplies
from China, Singapore, Japan, and Korea, themselves struggling against the
virus. We could not bid against the US and Europe who were understandably
paying top dollar for the same short supplies,” she added.
“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,” the neophyte
senator stressed.
Local manufacturers need not 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 under the Marcos bill.
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.
“Waiving export requirements during a crisis and crediting output
for local needs will allow a major industry like the garments industry to
preserve hundreds of thousands of jobs and even to expand,” she noted.
Ms. Marcos had recommended the shift from export manufacture to
local production of PPEs by communities of sewers in Taytay, Cavite, and Bataan
when the supply of raw materials and orders dwindled during the lockdown in
mid-March.
She warned that the country’s rising cases of COVID-19 infection
will pose more risks to the safety of healthcare workers, citing that the
Research Institute of Tropical Medicine already had to suspend operations twice
because its personnel fell ill.
“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,” Ms. Marcos emphasized.
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