The Department of Finance (DoF) is looking at tourism, agriculture, and education as the primary industries that should be granted with tax incentives by the national government.

Finance Secretary Cesar V. Purisima, said in an interview that the Aquino administration will be more “tighter” in grating tax holidays to business enterprises.

“The concept really is to only give incentives to enterprises or businesses that would not be here without those incentives. A tighter implementation of the incentives will be the order of the day,” Purisima told reporters.

The finance official also said that the new government will review the tax incentives and other privileges given by former President Arroyo's administration to private companies.

“President Aquino mentioned tourism as an area of priority, agriculture as an area of priority, even education, so we have to align everything. Just give us time to sit-down and review,” he added.

Purisima earlier said the DoF will coordinate with the Department of Trade and Industry and the Philippine Economic Zone Authority to review these tax privileges.

“We have to make sure that incentives are really necessary in bringing investors into the country,” Purisima, who led Arroyo’s successful attempt to raise the value-added tax to 12 percent in 2005, had said.

But Purisima assured that the additional revenues will be used to finance the government's social services and in trimming the budget deficit, which is seen to reach P300 billion this year.

“We will go through a process to make incentives more efficient so that we don't waste resources that we should have collected,” he added.

Under the Aquino administration, Purisima said it plans to reduce the country's budget deficit to 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the next three years.