‘Noynoy presidency to spur local, foreign investments’

MANILA, Philippines – Albay Gov. Joey Salceda, President Arroyo’s former senior economic adviser, took his oath as Bicol regional chairman of the Liberal Party Monday and projected that a victory by Liberal Party presidential candidate, Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III would spur much-needed domestic and foreign investments in the country.

“There have been many surveys among foreign and domestic investors showing that their confidence and investments will increase if an Aquino will once again lead the country and take charge of the economy,” Salceda said.

“As an analyst, I have been rigorously studying the differential impacts of the varying potential outcomes of the 2010 national elections. I have come to the preliminary conclusion that a new mandate under an Aquino presidency would have the highest statistical probability of triggering a significant increase in the investment rate from the current 15 percent while the domestic savings available to fund it stands at 30 percent,” Salceda said.

Salceda, who was grilled during a press conference on his decision to leave the administration camp and join Aquino, said the business community was optimistic that the LP bet would live up to his name and run a clean government, which would result in investor confidence in the process.

“Given the impact of the El Niño (phenomenon) and the global financial crisis on our deficits, public investments can at best be maintained. Thus the incremental investments would come from private domestic investments,” Salceda said.

He said his analysis was based on the study of University of the Philippines’ School of Economics dean Emmanuel de Dios entitled “Institutional Constraints on Philippine Growth” dated July 2008 in which it was concluded that foreign investments were more sensitive to political instability while domestic investments were more susceptible to governance indicators.

“We estimate that an Aquino presidency would increase it instantly by eight percent of the (gross domestic product) or almost P642-billion incremental private investments in the first 18 months. This would create an additional 642,000 jobs on top of the organic capacity of the economy for jobs creation,” Salceda said.

Salceda explained that based on figures, corporations earned some P4 trillion in the last nine years and only P1 trillion was invested back into the economy because of lack of business confidence.

“The money is already here but it is not moving around,” Salceda said.

“Noynoy, he’s a carrier not of a virus, he’s a carrier of that confidence that they can make the money flow, I’m using the top 1,000 corporations, there were P3-billion cash flows not reinvested but dividended,” Salceda said.

He said the government would only have to provide appropriate macroeconomic environment to spur investments.

Salceda also expressed his belief that an Aquino administration could afford not to raise taxes in solving fiscal deficit by collecting the existing ones judiciously and by bringing investments.

He said Aquino’s choices of commissioners for the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Bureau of Customs would send a strong signal to the business community as to how serious he would be in fighting tax evasion and other leakages.

Salceda was with other officials from Bicol who expressed support for Aquino and his running mate, Sen. Manuel Roxas II. –Aurea Calica (The Philippine Star)