President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. on Tuesday signed the controversial Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) Act to help draw more investors to the country.
The signing ceremony was held at the Kalayaan Hall in Malacañang last Tuesday despite criticisms from some groups that it will expose government funds to possible misappropriation.
In his speech during the event, the President said the MIF will allow the government to “leverage a small fraction of the considerable, but under utilized investable fund of the government” to stimulate the economy without the disadvantage of adding additional fiscal and debt burden.
“The MIF is a bold step towards our country’s meaningful transformation just as we are recovering from the adverse effect of the pandemic. We are now ready to enter a new age of sustainable progress, robust stability and broad-based empowerment,” Marcos said.
The fund, which serves as the country’s first-ever sovereign fund, aims to allow the government to invest its surplus revenues in financial and real assets in its priority sectors namely agriculture, energy, digitalization, and climate change mitigation.
Its capitalization will mainly come from state-run Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) and the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP).
The fund will be managed by the Maharlika Investment Corporation (MIC).
Government agencies and government-owned or controlled corporations (GOCC) providing for the social security and public health insurance of government employees, private sector workers and employees, and other sectors and subsectors such as the Social Security System (SSS) and the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), and Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) are prohibited from investing in the MIF.