EFFORTS are being made to make the country more attractive to investors and address concerns over recent tax reforms and continued bureaucratic inefficiencies, the country's new economic czar said.

Frederic Go, chief of the just-minted Office of the Special Assistant for Investment and Economic Affairs, told a briefing on Wednesday that he was pushing various programs and reforms.

In particular, he said that on the top of his office's to-do list were concerns over the 2017 Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (Train) last and proposed changes to the 2021 Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises Act, which, among others, overhauled incentives granted to investors.

"Both laws have generated serious concerns from foreign direct investors, particularly exporters, and I have put this on top of our to-do list currently," Go said.

"So we are working with Congress and the Senate to bring back certainty in our laws, providing confidence to investors of predictability and firm implementation of policies that protect their investments," he added.

Go said he also wanted investment promotion agencies (IPAs) to regain powers that would "enable them to protect companies from regulatory inconsistencies and excessive red tape."

"We are looking at ways to simplify the application of incentives for all future registrants," he said.

"To be specific, we hope to address through Congress ... the IPA's authorities. We want to restore the powers of the IPA agencies such as PEZA ( Philippine Economic Zone Authority), BoI (Board of Investments), Clark International Airport Cop., CDC (Clark Development Corp.), SBMA (Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority), etc.," Go added.

"[W]e want to give the IPAs back their power over the locators in their respective economic zones ... this will reduce the processing time for incentive applications and revert us back to the pre-Create [law] regime."

Go also said he was working to "clarify and simply" policies related to value-added taxes.

Other reforms to be pursued, he added, include pre-border inspections and digitalized invoicing to curb smuggling and prevent the entry of substandard products, among others.

"This will signal our commitment to openness, efficiency and transparency, encouraging local and foreign investors alike to bet on the Philippines," he added.

Sectors that the government wants to be made more attractive to investors include mining, electronics, agriculture and pharmaceuticals.

"For mining, we have to shorten the processing time to get exploration projects going and in a simplistic way," Go said.

"For semiconductors and microelectronics, we are targeting to boost what we are already good at: more assembly, more testing and more packaging, and to grow the higher value-added product, which is design and perhaps a prototype of a wafer fab," he added.

"In agriculture, we are looking at the obvious, which is boosting production of every possible commodity that we can, increasing post-harvest facilities and improving the logistical chain to bring the agriculture products to market.

"[Also,] we aim to bring down the costs of medicine and health care for everybody in the Philippines."

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