Taguig gains international ‘stamp of approval’

After lowering tax rates, Taguig officials said more foreign embassies are expected to relocate to the city.

It was the Singapore Embassy which started the ball rolling after recently acquiring a property in Fort Bonifacio.

Taguig City Mayor Freddie Tinga said the Singapore is expected to transfer its embassy premises there by 2008.

Singapore Embasssy’s First Secretary Adrian Chan said that the move intends to regularize their policy in line with other embassies in other Southeast Asian countries like Jakarta and Bangkok.

It is only in the Philippines that for the past years, the Singapore Embassy has been based in an office building not their own.

"We are going to transfer to a place suitable to our needs, with a nice environment and good infrastructure," Chan said of their transfer to the Fort.

Fort Bonifacio is home to foreign educational institutions such as the International School, British School, Japanese School and the Victory Leadership International.

Upscale residential condos, major commercial centers and new office buildings are also being built in the area.

The city is slowly but surely getting an international stamp of approval because apart from foreign embassies, companies like HSBC, Fujitsu and even call centers are also beginning to relocate in Taguig, city officials said.

They envision Taguig to become a premier city in 2020.

Tinga said that by drawing in more foreign investments buoyed on professionalized government service and lower tax rates, the goal is not far-fetched.

The City Council recently passed a new Taguig Revenue Code, which lowers annual business taxes for banks and other financial institutions, auto dealers, hotels, information technology or IT-related services to attract more investments into the city.

Councilor Allan Paul Cruz said the city’s new Revenue Code will impose local tax as low as 0.08 percent based on gross annual receipts from the 0.50 percent tax it used to charge banks and other financial institutions.

These include offshore banking, financial intermediaries, lending investors, investment companies, pawnshops, money shops, insurance companies, stock markets, stock brokers, dealers in securities, pre-need companies and foreign exchange.