Press Releases

The newly-signed Free Internet Access in Public Places Act has a proposed budget of P1.74 billion next year, for the rollout of 5,308 new WiFi hotspots, Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph Recto said. On top of said funding is a proposed P1.2 billion to lay the groundwork for a

Extending validity of licenses, passports shouldn’t make them more expensive I would like to thank President Duterte for signing into law the bills extending the period of validity of a passport to 10 years, and that of a driver’s license to five years. These are anti-red tape

Government has a triple whammy tax proposal on vehicles. Already known are the proposed additional taxes on motor vehicles and on the fuels that run them. Not yet on the public radar is the third one, which seeks to double car registration fees, or what is officially known as the

How can they convince the youth that 3-in-1 coffee tax is good for their future, but free college tuition is not? Should President Duterte follow his advisers’ recommendation to veto the free college tuition bill, “such a setback would be like losing the first round of a boxing

Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto today backed moves by the country’s top diplomat to find “a constitutionally-compliant win-win arrangement” that will allow Manila and Beijing to jointly explore for oil in the West Philippine Sea. With the Malampaya field off Palawan

If flood and storm text alerts have been few and infrequent, blame it on the circuitous way that proposed messages are “processed and approved before they are sent out,” Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph Recto said today. “It is not the fault of telcos,” Recto said, “but the

Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said senators would cross party lines in asking agencies during the 2018 national budget hearings if they are on track in spending their current year allocations to find out if underspending still plagues budget utilization as it had in

At the rate government is spending for irrigation, it will take almost a half a century to bring water to all of the country’s 1.3 million hectares of “irrigable land,” Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph Recto said today. Recto made this point following the Senate’s approval of a

Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph Recto has urged the Bureau of Customs (BOC) to start amending its rules in the shipment of balikbayan boxes, beginning “with some commonsensical changes” to regulations which had elicited complaints from overseas Filipino workers. “For example,