What to expect from the last year of Duterte’s presidency

PHILIPPINES - In Brief 27 Jul 2021 by Romeo Bernardo

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Towards the end of his rambling, close to three-hour State of the Nation Address (SONA) yesterday, President Rodrigo Duterte listed several priority bills that he wanted congress to pass in the final year of his presidency. The proposals were unsurprising and included the three bills to open the economy to more foreign competition (FIA, PSA, RTLA) which, as we noted in our last outlook report, were in advanced stages of congressional deliberations and are expected to pass this year. Like his predecessor’s final SONA, the President also asked congress to pass a unified pension bill for uniformed personnel, a source of medium-term fiscal risk that we think will likely again be kicked down the road. In addition to the legislative agenda, the President also directed the economic and infrastructure departments to work full speed to complete the flagship infrastructure projects, the economic centerpiece of his administration.Although the above will help shape the economy’s post pandemic recovery, we expect the last year of the President’s term to be defined mainly by how well he handles: (1) repeated surges in covid19 infections and speed in deploying vaccines; and (2) the conduct of the 2022 elections. He spoke briefly about the first (warning of a possible return to tighter restrictions given risks from the Delta variant and urging people to get vaccinated) and did not talk about the second (except a hint of his widely reported openness to seek the vice-presidency in order to stay relevant for the remainder of his presidential term).Table 1.The President’s legislative proposals