The government has extended incentives to 11 big-ticket projects with a combined investment capital of P368 billion under the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises (CREATE) Act.
The Fiscal Incentives Review Board (FIRB) said the largest project granted incentives is the P151 billion project of Converge ICT Solutions Inc. of tycoon Dennis Anthony Uy to provide high-speed broadband connectivity.
Finance assistant secretary and FIRB Secretariat head Juvy Danofrata said the
FIRB has put up its Fiscal Incentives Registration and Monitoring System (FIRMS) as one of the major accomplishments of the CREATE Law.
The projects granted incentives involve cement manufacturing, construction of mass housing units, shipbuilding, rail operations of a subway and communications infrastructures.
“Most of these incentivized investments are located outside the National Capital Region (NCR), thereby energizing rural development and generating more jobs in the countryside,” Danofrata said.
FIRMS is an online registration and incentives application portal on the FIRB website that investors or enterprises can access once they submit or monitor their applications for tax incentives with any of the government’s investment promotion agencies.
“The development of FIRMS is a representation of our efforts to ensure uniformity and organization in the FIRB processes, specifically for a more transparent, automated and easier tax incentive application, approval, and monitoring of our stakeholders,” Danofrata said.
Pursuant to the CREATE Act, the FIRB is mandated to oversee the grant of incentives for projects with investment value amounting to more than P1 billion each.
Last year, the FIRB approved the grant of tax incentives for the construction and operations of the railway of the Makati subway project, which was the biggest project investment amounting to P81 billion.
