Just when everybody thought that Finance Secretary Gary Teves had found the pot of gold when the government exceeded its VAT revenue goal of P11 billion by a billion in the first semester of the year, as a result of higher sales tax and the lifting of exemptions under the E-VAT Act of 2005, we are now being told that he will still proceed with the questionable privatization of the remaining, highly prized and, yes, very profitable government assets.

That announcement, coupled with BIR Officer in Charge Lilian Hefti’s assertion that the agency will be able to meet, maybe even exceed, its full-year revenue target, would have been enough to make Teves rethink his position. Right? Well, unfortunately, that may not be the case at all. The finance chief is insisting on privatization at all cost.

So, the question is: why is the good secretary, who is known to be a cautious and deliberate manager, going full speed ahead with his privatization initiative at a time when the global financial markets are in turmoil and the Philippine investment climate is being clouded by a number of concerns, including the zigzagging legal and incentives framework?

Sources at the Finance Department have offered two reasons for Teves’s insistence, both of which would appear to be incredulous, if not problematic, if not for the fact that tell-tale signs point to their credibility.

The first reason is that Teves has actually lowered BIR’s revenue target, thus making asset privatization a critical option to keep our fiscal position in sync with our commitments.

This seems to jive with Hefti’s issuance that the agency has been able to meet its incremental VAT revenue target and will, in fact, be able to meet its full-year target. This is a situation which her boss, Secretary Teves, earlier noted was next to impossible and, our sources said, he used to allegedly engineer the ouster of his college classmate Jojo Buñag from the tax agency.

Whether that was really the reason for Bunag’s abrupt resignation remains a mystery up to now. Suffice it is to say that we do not have any reason to disbelieve Hefti’s claim at this point.

So the question is: how can Hefti, who is barely three months on the job, be so sure that she will be able to meet her target when her boss was debunking an earlier assertion made by her own predecessor?

Well, it now turns out that, indeed, the BIR’s revenue target was lowered immediately after Bunag’s resignation, thus making it easier for Hefti and her boss to make that bold announcement about meeting it. The higher target was meant to oust Bunag pala! Whew! What a way?!

That lowered target, coupled with the resistance of the affected sectors to the finance chief’s overtures to increase taxes (common carrier’s tax) or proceed with another tax amnesty, and the seeming inability of the other revenue generating offices to collect on their assignments, explain Teves’s insistence on privatizing the remaining prized assets.

Thus, we should brace ourselves for this “fire sale” because that is really what this whole thing will turn out to be, considering the global economic environment.

So, our sources are now asking us to closely monitor Teves’s initiatives, especially the conditions being floated for each and every asset and the qualification process being imposed for each and every bidder, among others.

Which is why we are relieved that Sen. Mar Roxas, a cautious investment banker himself, has asked Secretary Teves to submit the details, including the timetable of this privatization initiative, as soon as possible. That will be in keeping not only with the demands for transparency but, more specially, with President Arroyo’s own injunction for the Finance Department to optimize the benefits for the people from this initiative.

Half full, half empty

So, which is which?

Some weeks back, some newspapers headlined that more Filipinos are experiencing hunger now than during the same period last year. The reports proceeded to suggest that the number of Filipinos living on US$1 a day has actually grown rather than diminished over the past few years.

On the other hand, the latest SWS survey noted that more Filipinos are hopeful that their situation will improve over the next 12 months, even as there are less who said that their lives have improved compared with those surveyed a year ago.

Then, the same survey showed that those who were optimistic about their situation 12 months down the road equal those who said their lot will be worse.

Confused? Well, hold on and don’t be. Why? Because the same survey noted that this impasse between optimists and pessimists, if we may call it such, is actually an indication of better expectations than the polls from 2000 to 2005, when “pessimists heavily outnumbered optimists.”

If you cannot make heads or tails about these surveys, don’t get upset. That may well be explained by the usual economic or, should we say, psychologist jargon about having a glass as half full or half empty depending on where one is coming from. Or, as some suggest, what your orientation is, whatever that means.

That may be an acceptable explanation but not if it gets to be used for a screaming headline or a tag in a radio or TV broadcast. The latter should be as factual as could be and open to less misinterpretation as possible. 

Which is why we are as concerned as one of our readers, Paulino Roces from Manila, who wrote in to bewail the practice of some leading broadsheets and news broadcasts to come out with earth-shaking, headline-grabbing stories which are less than factual or even truthful.

Roces cited the case of the number of soldiers who were supposed to have been poured into Sulu and Basilan for the latest military offensive. The headlines and broadcast reports screamed 10,000 soldiers in Sulu and 6,000 in Basilan going after 150 bandits.

Well, the truth is there are only 7,000 soldiers in Sulu and 3,000 in Basilan, and they are after more bandits than reported. In Sulu, the combined renegade MNLF, Abu Sayyaf and other bandit groups is 750, while the combined bandit forces in Basilan is closer to 400.

That translates into a 10-to-one ratio which, according to our military assets, is just enough. In certain countries, this type of warfare requires an even higher ratio of troops versus bandits or insurgents, as the case may be.

We are bringing this up since we are constantly being bombarded with exaggerated claims, here and abroad, and it behooves all of us, especially in the media, to correct things and bring a better perspective to the hot issues and concerns of the day. Otherwise, we may become conduits for misinformation and, yes, undue public anxiety and panic without wanting to. Tsk, tsk, tsk. . .

ON the day that this paper made as its banner story the revelation by Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya Jr. that the government plans to revive a controversial P1-billion fund for barangays—shot down just before the last elections for its suspect timing—the governor of beleaguered Isabela province, Mary Grace Padaca, was interviewed over dwIZ’s Karambola, where she made a thought-provoking observation.

So, Asia finally unshackled itself from the US economy. Riiiight!

Just ask executives at Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. Shares in Japan’s largest bank fell to a two-year low yesterday amid losses from the US mortgage crisis. Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. also said it recorded losses in securities backed by subprime loans.

With the way Congress has been legislating tax policies, it seems there is little incentive for people to pay the correct amount of taxes. 

The full privatization of the Philippine National Bank (PNB) should inspire the government to sell more state-owned corporations in banking and in other sectors that are either losing or are not being efficiently run by their caretakers.

Storm clouds are threatening with turbulence the viability of Philippine Air Lines (PAL), the only flag carrier in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) that has not received any government subsidy, with the looming open-skies policy that is about to be embraced by the regional bloc as a way to whip up tourism business within the region.

Just when everybody thought that Finance Secretary Gary Teves had found the pot of gold when the government exceeded its VAT revenue goal of P11 billion by a billion in the first semester of the year, as a result of higher sales tax and the lifting of exemptions under the E-VAT Act of 2005, we are now being told that he will still proceed with the questionable privatization of the remaining, highly prized and, yes, very profitable government assets.

Authenticity in terms of one’s life, if reflected on in terms of actions or an act, is the truthfulness of the act in one’s heart and one’s mind.