House Speaker Martin Romualdez wants President Ferdinand 'Bongbong' Marcos Jr. to certify the controversial Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) bill as urgent.
"If you ask me why don’t we just certify it as urgent so if you go to Davos we can just talk about having a sovereign wealth passed through the House of Representatives and that will be a very very exciting thing," Romualdez said in a press briefing on Tuesday night, December 13 in Brussels, Belgium.
The Speaker is part of the country's delegation together with the President for the ASEAN-EU Commemorative Summit.
According to him, the bill already got the backing of at least two-thirds of the members of the House of Representatives.
These lawmakers are willing to co-author the bill, said Romualdez, who is the principal author.
Prior to this, President Marcos expressed his support for the bill that seeks to establish a PHP 275 billion sovereign wealth fund, saying this will help in promoting economic development and attracting investment for the government.
At first, it was noted that once the bill was enacted, the MIF will extract resources from the contributions of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), Social Security System (SSS), Land Bank of the Philippines (Land Bank), and Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP).
However, the proposal received backlash from several lawmakers, progressive groups, economists, and the public, prompting the lower house to remove GSIS and SSS as sources of the proposed MIF measure.
Marikina 2nd District Rep. Stella Quimbo said the MIF will instead utilize the profits of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), along with the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) and Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP).
