President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. clarified on Thursday that the Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) is not on hold.
In his speech before leaving for Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to participate in the 2023 ASEAN-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Summit, Marcos said that he was alarmed by the news regarding the suspension of MIF.
"I was a bit alarmed by the news reports early this morning that I read in the newspapers that we have put the Maharlika Fund on hold. We are, the organization of the Maharlika Fund proceeds apace, and what I have done though is that we have found more improvements that we can make, specifically to the organizational structure of the Maharlika Fund," the President said.
It can be recalled that on Wednesday, Marcos suspended the implementing rules and regulations of Republic Act (RA) No. 11954, or MIF, for "pending further study."
The concept of the Maharlika Fund as a sovereign fund, according to the Chief Executive, will remain as the government is still committed to having it operational before the end of the year.
"We should not misinterpret what we have done as somehow a judgment on the rightness or wrongness of the MIF; on the contrary, we are just finding ways to make it as close and ideal as possible," he remarked.
Marcos reaffirmed that economic managers and "personalities who will actually be involved in the fund" had been consulted regarding the MIF.
"This has been in consultation not only with our economic managers but also with the people and personalities who will actually be involved in the fund," he said.
"And that’s why their inputs had been very important and that is why we are going to now utilize them to make it a better organization," he added.
On July 18, RA 11954, or the MIF, was signed by Marcos with the aim of optimizing national funds by generating returns to support the Marcos administration's economic goals laid out in the Medium-Term Fiscal Framework, the 8-Point Socioeconomic Agenda, and the Philippine Development Plan 2023–2028.
