by Che de los Reyes
IT HAS been described as an “investment in the next generation,” with its supposed results of millions of healthier, better educated Filipinos not expected to be realized anytime soon. But the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program is also an investment that is drawing a substantial chunk of its capital from foreign loans, a fact that has many observers raising red flags.
“The poor of the future will be the ones who will carry the burden of paying off this debt,” says Freedom from Debt Coalition Executive Director Milo Tanchuling, who believes it would be better if the CCT relied on locally sourced funds. That the government is also vague about alternative funding prospects for the program has only made those like Tanchuling uneasy – and wondering if it’s an initiative that is sustainable.
by Che de los Reyes
SOCIAL WATCH Co-Convener Marivic Raquiza considers it “very one-sided” that the government monitors compliance by beneficiaries – the so-called demand side – of the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program, but not the supply side, which the national and local government should take care of.
After all, a lack in the latter would make it harder for the beneficiaries to comply with the conditions tied to their cash grants and for the government’s stop-gap poverty alleviation program to meet its goals.
Sidebar
by Che de los Reyes
THE straight and narrow path, or “matuwid na daan” in Filipino, is where President Benigno Simeon ‘Noynoy’ C. Aquino III says he wishes all Filipinos would tread. And perhaps to prove that he’s not all talk and no action, Aquino has splurged billions of pesos on many “pantawid” (“tide over” in English) programs that all involve cash subsidies for the poor.
The biggest of these “pantawid” initiatives, of course, is the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) or the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) that has been allotted P21 billion in the 2011 General Appropriations Act (GAA), and a substantial part of it funded with loans from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.
P-Noy’s poverty challenge
by Malou Mangahas and Che de los Reyes
BENIGNO Simeon ‘Noynoy’ C. Aquino III became the Philippines’ 15th president on June 30, 2010 or exactly 70 days ago, triggering a contagion of hopefulness among Filipinos. He wooed and won votes with a slogan that was simple, yet catchy: ”Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap.” Without corruption, there’d be no poverty.
The second Aquino presidency has spread a virus of hope that finds sole parallel in the tide of goodwill that Filipinos bestowed on his late mother and democracy icon Corazon ‘Cory’ C. Aquino after the 1986 EDSA People Power revolt.
Indeed, Aquino’s campaign equation of “no corruption = no poverty” has animated Filipinos so much that the expectations are great that he will deliver results soon.
by Roel R. Landingin
WORLD BANK investigators looking into alleged collusion and corruption in Bank-funded road projects came very close to catching the conspirators while meeting to fix the bids, according to the Notice of Sanctions Proceedings dated March 2008 that summarized the Bank’s findings.
It happened on November 7, 2006, when the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) held an auction for a civil-works contract on a section of the Surigao-Davao coastal road, one of the many sub-projects of the $150-million National Roads Improvement and Management Project-1 (NRIMP-1).
Corruption in road projects
by Roel R. Landingin
THEY MAY have played vastly different roles but both the suspects and the whistle-blowers in the World Bank investigation on collusion and corruption in Bank-funded road projects in the Philippines have one thing in common: They all bagged some of the biggest public works contracts from the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).
But even bigger in value and number are the DPWH contracts obtained by the firms that served as whistle-blowers and witnesses — who were not sanctioned — in the investigation conducted by the World Bank’s anti-corruption unit, the powerful Department of Institutional Integrity (INT).
'Entire road project corrupted'
by Malou Mangahas
CORRUPTED TO the core, and entirely, by a “cartel” of kickback-takers with support from the highest levels of the Philippine government.
In gist, this is the damning conclusion of the World Bank’s anti-corruption unit, the powerful and dreaded Department of Institutional Integrity (INT) regarding the Bank-funded National Road Improvement and Management Project-1 (NRIMP-1).
Collusion in road projects
by Malou Mangahas
IN INVESTIGATING the alleged collusion and overpricing of World Bank-funded road projects in the Philippines, the international financial institution’s powerful and dreaded anti-corruption unit, the Department of Institutional Integrity (INT), conducted interviews for almost three years in at least three countries. By the time it wound up its work, it had interviewed some 60 people.
The 230-page Part II of the Notice of Sanctions Proceedings is perhaps the first solid and extensive documentation of the myriad, if also conflicting, cases of collusion and corruption in the public works sector, according to industry players themselves.
by Karol Anne M. Ilagan
LAST JANUARY 21, at a House of Representatives committee hearing on the alleged collusion and corruption in World Bank-financed road projects, Pampanga Rep. Aurelio Gonzales Jr. offered a quaint proposition. He said it should be the Bank that should be sanctioned and not the contractors who won the bids under a cloud of collusion and overpricing.
“(Hindi) dapat i-sanction ang mga contractors,” said Gonzales, one of the vice chairmen of the committee on public works and highways that was conducting the hearing. Instead, he asserted, it should be the World Bank that should be put under scrutiny.
Collusion in the eye of the beholder?
by Roel R. Landingin
COLLUSION, LIKE beauty, may be in the eyes of the beholder — or the investigators — at least as far as public-works projects in the Philippines are concerned.
When the World Bank’s powerful and dreaded anti-corruption unit, the Department of Institutional Integrity (INT), looked closely into three rounds of international public tenders for two Bank-funded road projects in the Philippines between 2002 and 2006, it found convincing proof of collusion and excessive pricing among some of the 15 Filipino and foreign bidders.
