House bill seeks to make foreign artists pay fees for performing in PHL

(Updated 8 p.m.) A bill has been filed at the House of Representatives seeking to require foreign performers in the Philippines to pay equity to compensate for the income supposedly lost by local performers due to the absence of audience and sponsors.

House Bill 4218, or the OPM Development Act of 2014, will require foreign artists to pay Reciprocal Equity Fees equivalent to the amount that will be charged to a Filipino artist performing in the country where the foreign performer is from.

Under the bill, which was filed by Ifugao Rep. Teddy Baguilat, the fee will be collected before the foreign artist is allowed to perform in the Philippines.

At a press conference, Baguilat stressed the need for a law to safeguard the interests of Filipino musical artists, noting that the influx of foreign performers in the country has made popularizing Original Pilipino Music (OPM) among Filipinos a “colossal challenge.”

“[We] should take measures to protect our local artists and further promote Filipino music,” he said.

Singer-songwriter Noel Cabangon, who was with Baguilat during the press briefing, said the bill does not seek to discourage the arrival of foreign artists in the country. Rather, it only gives Filipino artists what is due to them as homegrown talents.

“We’re not against foreign performers who come in here, pero kailangan rin nating i-address yung displacement of economic opportunity that arises when the foreign artists are here,” Cabangon said.

“Hindi lang mga Filipino artists ang apektado kapag may [foreign performances] dito dahil pati yung mga local producers, nawawalan rin ng income due to the loss of commercial sponsors,” he added.

The Organisasyon ng Pilipinong Mang-aawit  (OPM), a non-profit group of Filipino singers,  has been collecting equity fees from foreign performers for years in accordance with the Memorandum of Agreement it signed with the Bureau of Immigration.

OPM, whose members include Cabangon, Ogie Alcasid and Mitch Valdez, charges a P5,000 equity fee to every foreign performer, choreographer or member of the production staff who participates in a musical production.

But while the group has been able to collect the fee most of the time from compliant concert producers, Cabangon said it cannot enforce the rule on producers of foreign musicals and other related productions in the absence of a law requiring all artistic performers to pay equity fees.

“Hirap kaming maningil. Marami nang producers na hindi nag-comply. 'Yung producer ng Wicked at Phantom of the Opera, hindi nagbayad noong fee dahil sabi nila play 'yon [at hindi concert],” he said.

The equity fee collected by OPM goes to its Singers’ Welfare Fund, which subsidizes the medical and legal needs of the organization’s members.

Under the bill, the equity fees collected by the National Committee on Music (NCM) shall be constituted into a fund to be exclusively used for the identification, selection, training and support of musically-gifted Filipino children. NCM is under the Sub-commission on the Arts of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA).

The bill also provides for the granting of tax credits to all broadcast organizations that air a minimum of four OPM songs for every clock hour of a program. — KBK, GMA News