In the middle of the worst public health crisis the country has ever seen, the Duterte administration is lying to the public about its efforts to address the pandemic, research group IBON said. After underscoring the insufficiency of the Php27.1 billion COVID-19 response package of the Duterte administration, the group’s executive director Sonny Africa said that the Duterte administration added Php14 billion worth of tourism infrastructure projects to bloat the anti-coronavirus funds.Africa said that the Php14 billion allocation identified by government’s economic managers as support for tourism, supposedly being the sector most affected by the COVID-19 threat, is actually part of Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA) funds for big-ticket infrastructure projects. Most of these were already allocated even before the pandemic hit the country, Africa pointed out.

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