Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III declined to accept for the second time an award from an international publication of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank that cited his exemplary performance as the head of the Duterte administration’s economic team.
GlobalMarkets is the newspaper published at the International Monetary Fund/World Bank Annual Meeting this year in Washington D.C.
Anita Linda Aquino, the chief of staff of Dominguez, conveyed the Finance secretary’s non-acceptance of the award to GlobalMarkets editors led by managing editor Toby Fildes.
“On behalf of Secretary Dominguez, I would like to express my appreciation that GlobalMarkets magazine is recognizing him as the Finance Minister of the year for Asia Pacific,” Aquino said.
“I am conveying with deep regret that as a matter of course, Secretary Dominguez does not accept awards in the performance of his duties. Clearly, the efforts exerted by the team which Secretary Dominguez is part of is bearing fruit in various aspects, such as the Tax Reform initiative and the Build Build Build program,” Aquino said.
Fildes earlier informed Dominguez of the award in an e-mail sent to the secretary on Aug. 21, 2019. Fildes chairs the editorial committee of GlobalMarkets which considered Dominguez as the outstanding candidate for the award this year.
“You have been a very safe pair of hands in a tough 12-month period for the government of the Philippines. You’ve been left alone to fight for the president’s tax reform packages, to oversee the ‘build build build’ campaign, which goes on despite perennial tussles over the budget between parliament and senate,” Fildes said.
“While you are close to Duterte, even the longest and most cordial relationships can go sour when politics intrudes, but that hasn’t happened. With your CEO style you have kept your head down and your focus on keeping the Philippines economy on an upward path,” Fildes said.
Fildes said he personally wanted to meet Dominguez and have the honor of presenting the award at the GlobalMarkets Awards Ceremony on Oct. 19 in the Ballroom at National Press Club in Washington D.C. Fildes said Dominguez “very well deserved” the award.
The first time Dominguez declined to accept such award from GlobalMarkets was in September 2017.
In December of the same year, Dominguez also declined to accept the Business and Economic Management Excellence Award from BizNewsAsia, saying he was just doing his job and what the government achieved so far was a result of a team effort.
Marc Gregory Crisostomo, head executive assistant of the Office of the Secretary, relayed to Tony Lopez, president and chief executive of BizNewsAsia, Dominguez’s non-acceptance of the award.
“The secretary is not alone in this fight for a more inclusive economy. The Cabinet works hard under the directive of the President. Thus, it is with deep regret that Secretary Dominguez declines the honor of this award as he is just performing his duties as the Secretary of Finance…,” Crisostomo said.
Crisostomo said that Dominguez was always telling his staff that the development of the nation was “a team effort.”
Dominguez has been the Finance secretary since day one of the Duterte administration. Under his leadership, the package one of the Comprehensive Tax Reform Program called Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion was passed into law in December 2017 and took effect January 2018.
TRAIN cut personal income taxes but raised the excise taxes on alcohol, tobacco, automobile, and fuel in a bid to raise more revenues to be used for development and infrastructure projects under the unprecedented “Build, Build, Build” program of the government.
Dominguez earlier said the passage into law of the remaining packages of the CTRP was very important to ensure a steady source of revenues for the country’s economic modernization.
Dominguez is eyeing the swift approval by Congress of the Corporate Income Tax and Incentives Reform Act or CITIRA to make the country more attractive to foreign investors.
CITIRA aims to gradually reduce the corporate income tax rate from 30 percent to 20 percent and rationalize the system of granting fiscal perks to companies.
