Malacañang should convene a task force, to include diplomats and Taipans, that will solve the shortage of Tocilizumab and other anti-pneumonia drugs made scarce by the surge in the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said it is ti

The Department of Health (DOH) is planning to buy 758,700 sets of personal protective equipment (PPE) next year at an average cost of P1,079 each, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said. The P819 million needed for the purchase has been included in the 2022 national

Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto welcomed the administration’s request for standby authority to buy as much as P45.4 billion worth of vaccine booster shots, should the same be needed next year. Recto said the amount is part of the P151.6 billion in unprogrammed funds in

Four in 10 personnel positions – or 5,826 – in the Commission on Audit (COA) are vacant, a manpower lack that will be aggravated when 1,000 personnel who are in the 61-65 age group retire. “That’s the equivalent of 10 Army battalions,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph

The institutionalization of “pasa-buy” in government purchases has transformed two agencies into “mega parking lots of funds” which, despite years-long delays in delivering the goods and projects they were contracted to buy, still raked in hundreds of millions in commissions.

Big cities like Manila have the “boots on the ground and the muscle memory” to conduct large scale distribution of aid, whether in cash or in kind, “complex operations which understaffed national agencies may find hard to do on their own,” Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto

The order suspends the collection of the tax. The permanent solution, however, will be in the form of a law purging all ambivalence in that provision of the Tax Code. Still, it is a welcome move and I thank the good Secretary of Finance for this order, which would help ease the

First, government should listen to scientists, the ones who matter. Join them in making the prescription. Just be mindful that if lockdown is the cure, then like any medicine, an overdose can be lethal. It is all about the right dosage and duration. It should go with ayuda, which

SPONSORSHIP SPEECHSenate Resolutions Commending and Congratulating Hidilyn DiazSenate President Pro Tempore Ralph G. Recto27 July 2021 Years ago, a small girl in Zamboanga carried boxes of fish to market to help feed her family. That woman last night with one mighty lift ended

The unpopular private motor vehicle inspection scheme has been “roused from the dead,” and Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto is asking government to explain to the public “what variant it has set loose.”  “It has been put into a coma upon orders of Malacañang. Now it