WASHINGTON DC—Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III has met separately here with his fellow finance ministers from Indonesia and Japan on the sidelines of the World Bank (WB)-International Monetary Fund (IMF) Spring Meetings, and discussed with them pressing global concerns affecting the post-pandemic recovery of Asian economies.

Dominguez and Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati discussed the effects of the pandemic on their respective countries, particularly on basic education, the budget deficit, and the national debt; and the impact of the protracted Russia-Ukraine conflict on the arising costs of food and fuel.

In a brief, informal meeting, meanwhile, with Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki, Dominguez reiterated his earlier proposal for the Philippines and Japan to enter into a demographic partnership to further boost the post-pandemic growth of their respective economies.

This partnership, said Dominguez, is now more feasible with the recent enactment of three Philippine laws that further liberalized the economy and opened wide the country to foreign investors.

These laws are the amendatory measures to the Public Service Act (PSA), Foreign Investments Act (FIA), and Retail Trade Liberalization Act (RTLA) which all relaxed the restrictions on foreign ownership in certain Philippine businesses.

Under this demographic partnership, Dominguez said Japan will provide the research, technology, and resources, while the Philippines will do the marketing and manufacturing side by lending the skills of its young, talented workforce to this proposed new era of economic cooperation between the two countries.

In his meeting with Suzuki, Dominguez also thanked anew the government and people of Japan for their support of President Rodrigo Duterte’s “Build, Build, Build” program and other development initiatives as well as for their donation of 3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines.

As for his meeting with Mulyani, Dominguez congratulated the Indonesian Finance Chief on her deft handling of the Group of 20 (G-20) meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors that was held here recently.

Indonesia, the current G-20 president, invited Dominguez as an observer in the meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors.

In relation to their respective countries’ efforts to recover from the pandemic, Secretary Dominguez also informed Mulyani about how the Philippines has been able to increase its revenue collections from so-called ‘sin’ products by imposing higher taxes on cigarettes and successfully implementing a tax on sugary beverages.

Dominguez said the sugar-sweetened beverage tax has earned the Philippine government an average of $2 million a day.

Indonesia has long been planning to impose a tax on sugary beverages.

They also discussed how the two countries have been recovering from the pandemic, but are now saddled with the negative impact of the Russia-Ukraine crisis on inflation and on their respective fiscal resources. DOF