PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte has approved a P1,000 hike in the monthly pension of Social Security System (SSS) retirees, but there will be an increase in contributions from members.

In a news conference, presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella said Duterte was “not amenable” to funding the pension increase with taxpayers’ money. The SSS should finance it from contributions and investments, he said.

MANILA, Oct. 6 - The Department of Finance (DOF) envisions its comprehensive tax reform plan to be the catalyst of an ambitious government program to raise an extra P1 trillion yearly for unparalleled public investments geared to free some 10 million Filipinos from poverty in six years’ time and eventually transform the Philippines into a high-income state by 2040.

MANILA, Aug. 30 - Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said the Duterte administration is seizing on an “opportune convergence” of growth-friendly factors to reconfigure our tax system that is “crying out for reform” as a way to make Philippine communities safer and our society fairer for future generations.