Albay Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda is pushing for reforms in the country’s restrictive laws on foreign direct investment to enable the Philippines to perform at par with its Asian neighbors, attract more foreign investors and help further expand its gross domestic product.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has ranked the Philippines with the most restrictive laws on FDIs, among the 10 ASEAN members, and separately, in 35 other countries in 2018.
Salceda, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, said the Duterte administration recently achieved the “highest ever FDI percentage of GDP” in history, pushed by structural reforms and its Build-Build-Build Program, but still lagged behind Cambodia and Vietnam—both ravaged by protracted wars over decades—due to restrictive laws.
The lawmaker presented three bills pushing for amendments to the Public Service Act and the Foreign Investments Act, House bills 78 and 1221 which he both authored, and the Retail Trade Liberalization Act which he co-authored, to help boost the country’s FDI performance.
