Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III on Friday said the government is not yet considering selling major assets to raise funds to be used for the fight against COVID-19.
President Rodrigo Duterte said in a Cabinet meeting aired Friday morning the government would borrow and if needed, sell assets to raise funds to finance its pandemic response, which so far already amounted to P352.7 billion.
“We have not reached the point at which we are considering sale of major government assets,” Dominguez said in a viber message Friday.
Although saying the money of the government used to respond to the pandemic was sufficient for now, Dominguez conceded the state did not have the authority to spend more.
“That is our problem right now. We have cash but we don’t have the authority to have bigger spending. We are making sure that all of our spending will be for the benefit of the poorest of the poor,” he said.
“We are reserving the balance for the ‘Build, Build, Build’ projects so that after this COVID pandemic, we have money to invest in ‘Build, Build, Build’,” Dominguez said.
