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It is
well that Congress and the newly established Procurement
Board have decided to look deeper into the whys and
wherefores of that World Bank board decision deferring
consideration of the second tranche amounting to $232
million of the bank-funded National Road Improvement
Program (NRIP).
The
bank’s action was based on allegations of bid rigging
and related procurement problems in connection with two
packages worth $30 million which were reportedly won by
State-owned Chinese contractors.
This is
not the first time, and will probably not be the last,
that such allegations will crop up and even highlighted
not only in WB-funded projects but in others as donor
agencies or nations proffer to trumpet their
“contributions to the world” in much the same fashion
that private companies take offense if anybody as much
as question or downplay models of their so-called
corporate social responsibility.
But no
matter. This is one inquiry which should be welcomed by
all parties regardless of political persuasion and, of
course, the tax-paying public which will ultimately pay
for the loan if only to prove to one and all, not the
least recently installed WB president Robert Zoellick,
that we do not in any manner or form condone such
misdeeds.
Now, for
this undertaking to be persuasive and responsible the
investigators, especially members of the opposition,
should try as best they can to temper their rage and
look beyond this one program and one tranche not only at
our procurement rules but also the terms, conditions and
implementation of the so-called development funding
itself.
For
starters, they should ask the World Bank to give them a
list of all the projects which the agency has funded in
the Philippines initially over the past 10 years to have
a comprehensive look at how these have been initiated,
implemented and then concluded.
Up to
now, for example, we have yet to have a full and proper
disclosure of the results of an investigation into the
disbursement of at least $30 million in loans from the
World Bank for the Nipas (National Integrated and
Protected Areas) Project in the early 1990s most of
which were coursed through accredited NGOs, many of
whose leaders have since crossed over as fire breathing
“transparency and good governance” advocates within the
ranks of the so-called civil- society network.
For that
matter, the investigators should also look into the fund
flow and rip off which attended the disbursements of
billions in the World Bank-funded coconut industry
rehabilitation program or the WB-aided “Telepono sa
Barangay” projects nationwide which many say rivaled the
aborted NBN/ZTE in almost all aspects of skullduggery.
Too, we
have yet to hear these same groups, many of whom also
ate from the trough of the ADB-initiated multi-million
dollar nationwide reforestation and replanting program
which began in the dying years of the Marcos regime,
repackaged then funded even more after Edsa 1.
Not to
mention the brouhaha which attended a number of
high-profile JBIC- initiated and ADB-cofunded projects
such as the Batangas Port rehabilitation and the stalled
airports modernization program.
Indeed,
the investigators will not be wanting in projects to
look at and get lessons from if they are as intent as
they say they are in looking at how these so-called
development funding from all over the place for which
the country has been hooked and continue to be inveigled
have been misused or, at the very least, led to even
more penurious arrangements for all of us way, way into
the future.
For if
truth be told, rigging and related irregularities are
present on both sides of the divide. In fact, we have
been shown materials indicating that even before a
recipient country, such as the Philippines, gets hold of
any funding from the World Bank, ADB, JBIC and other
funding agencies, syndicates within these agencies are
already at play doing precisely what Mr. Zoellick and
his crew are railing against: tailoring the terms,
conditions, approval and, yes, implementation of the
requested funding to suit their favorite consultants,
contractors, auditors and investigators.
In the
case of JBIC, the Japanese official development
assistance (ODA) agency, for example, my cohost in the
radio program Karambola, Cavite Rep. Boying
Remulla, who headed the Presidential Management Staff
ODA review group during the Estrada years and who now
sits as vice chairman of the House oversight committee,
estimates that at least 28 percent of all loans is
immediately recycled to favored Japanese consultants and
agents even before the project starts.
That is
apart from the bulk of the funds being siphoned off all
over again to favored Japanese contractors who, like in
the case of the SCTEP, take their sweet time colluding
among themselves and jacking up prices every so often
which is, of course, condoned by the consultants, and
even JBIC.
The JBIC
then offers to finance the cost overrun and proceeds to
blackmail the government if it raises a howl on the
project or any other Japanese concern.
In
short, these so-called development funding arrangements
and related assistance to developing countries being
provided and managed by the World Bank, ADB and JBIC,
the Japanese ODA agency, among others, have actually
been a cushy and highly profitable scheme.
The main
donor countries balm their consciences and recycle their
monies to benefit their favored coterie of consultants,
auditors, investigators, agents and gofers at the
expense of the millions of taxpayers in the funded
countries who will have to bear the cost of these
“easy-term” loans for years.
This
pitiful situation, akin to an addict, has been our fate
and that of other developing countries for years. In
fact, it has been one of the key issues which our
publics have railed against all this time.
That the
focus has almost always been on the irregularities which
inevitably clouds project implementation by any sitting
administration even before Marcos, in the case of the
Philippines, has allowed the syndicates and their
principals within the funding agencies to go almost
scot-free and, worse, even lecturing on the evils of
such misdeeds.
It is
time the culture, if not the entire nexus of corruption
which these agencies from the World Bank to the ADB to
JBIC and similar bilateral funding units, is brought to
the light of day. While we should and we must bring the
perpetrators of these misdeeds to answer for their
crimes, we should, in the same breath, take a closer
look at how we can finally wean ourselves away from the
clutches of the do-gooders and the culture of hypocrisy
and hyperventilated angst of those who have turned
development financing on its head with their cushy
aid-for-profits-and-more pretensions.
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