Government To Revise Policy On It Ecozones, E-Banking

Government is coming up with its revised policy on information technology (IT) economic zones and on online or e-banking, the review of which is being undertaken as part of government’s bid to curtail any abuse on the use of e-commerce.

The awarding of IT zone status was recently suspended after certain loopholes in government’s rules on IT parks were discovered.

The Department of Trade and Industry and the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) are jointly undertaking the policy review after it was discovered that certain real estate developers were taking advantage of the IT zone status just to avail themselves of government incentives for their own development projects.

DTI officials said the objective of the policy is to give incentives to locators and not to developers. There are suggestions that a distinction be made between zone developers and zone locators. Under the present policy, developers, and locators receive the same set of incentives from government, such as income tax holidays, tax and duty-free importation of capital equipment, among others.

Among the IT zones that government has approved since the liberalization of the IT zone rules are the 13.3-hectare Eastwood City Cyberpark in Quezon City; the 24.4-hectare Fort Bonifacio-Silicon Alley IT Park in Taguig; and the 18.7-hectare Northgate Cyberzone in Muntinlupa.

Those said to be affected by the suspension are the Bonifacio Information Special Technology Zone; the CCTC IT Park in Cebu; the Cebu Cybertown, IT Park; and the RCBC Plaza IT Park; the Aseana Intelligent Technologies Plaza in Parañaque, and the PBCom Tower.Meanwhile, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has yet to issue the implementing rules and regulations to govern online banking in the country, and is said to have suspended applications for e-banking license until the new rules are out.

But even before the rules are out, many banks are already undertaking e-banking, or semblances of it. BSP officials are said to be worried about security issues concerning online banking.

There are worries that unlike automated teller machine (ATM) transactions where the amount of a transaction will depend on whatever money is in the account or is in the machine, an e-bank can theoretically open up unlimited resources to the cyber user.