Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia presented the 10-Point Economic Agenda of the administration of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte. With the agenda, Philippines will be poised to continue growing by a robust pace and in a manner that is more inclusive. Guided by this agenda, the government is carrying on macroeconomic policies, ramping up infrastructure spending, promoting rural development, and investing in human capital development. 

The 10-Point Economic Agenda 

1. Continue and maintain current macroeconomic policies, including fiscal, monetary, and the trade policies.
2. Institute progressive tax reform and more effective tax collection, indexing taxes to inflation. A tax reform package will be submitted to Congress by September 2016.
3. Increase competitiveness and the ease of doing business. This effort will draw upon successful models used to attract business to local cities (e.g., Davao) and pursue the relaxation of the Constitutional restrictions on foreign ownership, except as regards land ownership, in order to attract foreign direct investments.
4. Accelerate annual infrastructure spending to account for 5% of GDP, with Public-Private Partnerships playing a key role.
5. Promote rural and value chain development toward increasing agricultural and rural enterprise productivity and rural tourism.
6. Ensure security of land tenure to encourage investments, and address bottlenecks in land management and titling agencies.
7. Invest in human capital development, including health and education systems, and match skills and training to meet the demand of businesses and the private sector.
8. Promote Science, technology, and the creative arts to enhance innovation and creative capacity toward self-sustaining, inclusive development.
9. Improve social protection programs, including the government’s Conditional Cash Transfer program to protect the poor against instability and economic shocks.
10. Strengthen implementation of the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Law to enable especially the poor couples to make informed choices on financial and family planning.

On August 23, 2016, Secretary Pernia announced that the planning process is underway, with the drafting of the framework and list of Planning Committees for the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2017-2022. He added that planning guidelines for the PDP formulation have been drafted, which will inform agencies on the priority areas in each sectors that they will work on. Further, the Philippine government will continue efforts of strongly linking the planning and budgeting process to ensure the sustainability of priority programs and projects.