MikeLigalig.com

source: PNA

Malacanang hopes that the "watered-down" Senate version of the sin tax bill will be "remedied."

"We thank Senator (Ralph) Recto for his efforts, but the Senate version of the bill falls short of what we need to fund the health programs we envisioned," Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office Secretary Ramon Carandang, in a statement, said on Wednesday.

Recto, Senate ways and means committee chair, earlier said that the sin tax measure they endorsed would raise P15 billion to P20 billion a year in additional revenues for government.

"Our committee report predictably and responsibly could generate in the first year between P15 billion and P20 billion," he said.

The Senate version is lower in revenue generation terms than the sin tax bill approved last June by the House of Representatives, which is expected to raise P31.35 billion in the first year of implementation.

"We hope this can be remedied," said Carandang.

Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda, in a press briefing, also said the watered-down Senate version of the sin tax bill reduced substantially the revenues that the government expects to collect.

"Certainly, we hope that it can still be remedied in bicam. But we thank Senator Ralph Recto’s efforts coming out with a version. But it does not address, it doesn’t achieve the amount of revenues we had hoped to collect based on our version," he said.

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