Highlights of Sen. Pia Cayetano's responses to Sen. Francis Pangilinan's interpellation on CREATE

Sen. Pangilinan asked what agriculture investments will be incentivized under the current tax regime

Sen. Pia: Currently, in the IPP, it is included as one of the incentivized activities... Currently, there is no hierarchy. It's just incentivized. It's as simple as that. That's why, depending on his honor's direction, I will be happy to explain that in the CREATE bill, we incentivize it in many ways, agriculture.

Sen. Pangilinan said more investments are needed for agriculture; We want to see how the bill will promote more investments in the agri sector

Sen. Pia: Tier 1 are basic activities... It aims to help us achieve our SDGs. As simple as that. The fact that there is investment in that field already is helping us achieve our SDGs. It already uplifts the lives of the Filipinos. The objective is to keep it simple because these are very simple industries. Madaling mag-qualify diyan because it is an essential sector we want to support.

Tier 3 is where the highest level of incentives are given here. These are basically for state of the art interventions and technology. It refers to highly technical, manufacturing, agriculture, fishing, forestry, and service activities that indispensably require the employment of knowledge, modern science, engineering, state of the art technologies and research in the process of production of goods and services, resulting in demonstrable? significant value added productivity, efficiencies, and breakthroughs.

Very basic investments in agriculture will already receive incentives in Tier 1. And then the more complex investments will receive more incentives under Tier 3.

I believe all of us would want our farmers to be able to use technology to enhance their production and even free up their time to go into other endeavors. That is why I have asked the DA to study what is the future of agriculture. Because in Silicon? Valley now, they are now manufacturing agricultural products, not in the way we know it. In fact, futurists of food said that agriculture as we know it is dead. So this will really promote that kind of investment. Hindi tayo pwedeng pag-iwanan. On the other hand, basic agriculture will still be supported in Tier 1.