The Aquino administration is not keen on pushing for amendments to the economic provisions of the 1987 Charter, as it believes the existing provisions are enough to help it meet its growth goals, a Palace spokesman said on Tuesday.
Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda was responding to the statement of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile proposing discussions on possible amendments to economic provisions in the Constitution to spur growth in the country.
“As far as the Executive branch is concerned, we believe the economic provisions in the Constitution can still pave the way for further economic development,” Lacierda said.
He reiterated the administration’s position that “other than amending the Constitution, we will provide a level playing field, we will make the rules more investment-friendly, and most important, we have taken away the graft-ridden process of bidding as far as government transactions are concerned.”
Secretary Ramon Carandang of the Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office said the constitutional provision on foreign-ownership limits is seen as a hindrance to foreign investments, but industries that have no foreign-ownership limits have not exactly attracted a lot of investors.
“Foreign-ownership limits don’t exist in mining, they don’t exist in power, yet we’ve not seen, until recently, any significant foreign investments in those areas,” Carandang said.
Given this example, “then it’s clearly not ownership restrictions that are preventing greater investment in those areas,” he said.
“There have been effectively no foreign-investment limits on power. And yet we had a situation for the longest time where there were no investments there. Now we have a situation where there are investments, but that’s not due to any revisions in the Constitution,” Carandang noted, adding this would suggest “that removing foreign-ownership limits at least in some industries is not really what people are looking for.”
“I’m open to the argument that there may be other industries where you may see an upsurge of
investments if you raise ownership limits but at this point, the empirical evidence suggests that it’s not an issue,” Carandang said.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court (SC) has yet to set the date for oral arguments the motions for reconsideration filed by various groups and persons seeking the reversal of its June 28 decision that redefined the term “capital” in the constitutional provision limiting to 40 percent foreign ownership of domestic public utilities.
The Court is still awaiting all the pleadings of the parties involved in the case.
Earlier, businessman Manuel V. Pangilinan, chairman of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), PLDT president Napoleon Nazareno, the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have earlier filed separate motions asking the Court to abandon the ruling.
In that ruling, the Court also held that the term “capital” in Section 11, Article XII of the 1987 Constitution refers only to shares of stock entitled to vote in the election of directors or the so-called common shares and not to the total outstanding, capital stock composed of “common” or voting shares and “preferred” or nonvoting shares.”
Pangilinan had warned the country of serious repercussions on the economy if the ruling were not reversed; the PSE said the country’s economy stands to lose more than P630 billion in allowable foreign investments in PSE-listed shares or equivalent to a loss of 9 percent of the current total fair market value of the PSE-listed shares if the decision is implemented.
The SEC, through the Office of the Solicitor General, also filed a motion asking the Court to reconsider the ruling, which is described as premature.
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