MANILA: The Philippines will extend 51 billion pesos ($1 billion) in wage subsidy to 3.4 million workers in small businesses, adding to the costs of a lockdown that has shut the nation’s economic engine.
The government will prioritise 2.6 million whose employers have updated tax payments and pension fund contributions, Finance Undersecretary Karl Kendrick Chua said in a late Monday briefing along with President Rodrigo Duterte. The subsidy will be as much as 8,000 pesos for every qualified person for two months, according to a separate statement.