Group wants ADB to give farmers its due

"ADB is guilty of compromising food security", this was the consensus among Asian food activists in a forum today held in Quezon City.

 

Arze Glipo, convenor of APNFS*, criticized the bank for its loan conditionalities that forced governments to deregulate and turn over agriculture to the profiteering private sector. Ms. Glipo cites the case of the Philippines and many other Asian member countries who are now threatened by the rice shortage.

 

The Philippines is among the world's top rice producers (rank = 8) yet it remains a net importer of the staple. It was rice sufficient up to the early 80s but lost control and relied on importation since the early 90s. Current RP rice production can only cover for 80% of the country's needs.

 

The ADB must be held accountable to the growing food insecurity in developing countries. Since its founding in 1967, the Bank had financed countless agricultural projects, but weakened farmers and communities instead of strengthening them. ADB supported the commodification of rice, application of market mechanisms and the price system in agriculture, liberalization and opening of trade.

 

"ADB projects like the Grain Sector Development Program (GSDP) in the Philippines and the Khulna-Jessore Drainage Rehabilitation Project in Bangladesh have been given with many policy conditionalities, including the removal of quantitative restrictions and lowering of tariffs of agricultural products. ADB conditionalities force countries to adopt policies that are harmful, especially those in the margins, farmers and fishers included", Ms. Glipo concluded in her presentation. 

 

Many of the Bank's projects are controversial and are considered "onerous" because other than its anti-poor conditionalities, the projects have destroyed lives. The Khulna-Jessore Drainage in Bangladesh now caused prolonged flooding in surrounding communities, causing families to lose livelihoods and wallow in poverty. The Philippines' Grain Sector Development Program barely took off, and was cancelled after US$ 100 million had been taken by government. In both instance, the supposed benefits are non-existent, and beneficiaries continue to suffer. The absurdity of it all is that the ADB will collect on these debts, no matter what.

 

 

Presidential veto on debt service assailed

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino "Nene" Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today accused President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of breaking anew the constitutional principle of transparency by blocking the mandatory public disclosure of repayments for government debts.

Pimentel assailed the President's veto of a provision in the 2008 national budget that would require the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and the Department of Finance (DoF) to submit quarterly reports of actual and foreign and domestic debt service payments to the committee on appropriations of the House of Representatives and the committee on finance of the Senate.

He also criticized the Chief Executive for vetoing a special provision in the new budget law that seeks to prohibit the use of debt servicing funds for loans that are considered "fraudulent, wasteful or useless."

Pimentel said there is no rhyme nor reason behind the President's veto of the budget provision on the mandatory reporting of debt service disbursements to Congress.

"Why would Malacañang hide these transactions from the public when the Constitution says that the government must exercise transparency in its actions?" he said.

The minority leader said the need for a full public disclosure of the government loan transactions becomes more necessary in the wake of anomalies that have been uncovered in the $329 million national broadband project which was funded by a loan from China's Export-Import Bank.

"The more they keep these transactions a secret, the more the people are tempted to think that some hanky panky is going on," he said.

Pimentel also explained that the budget provision on mandatory reporting loan payments was inserted by Congress to enable it to monitor them in the light of observations that actual disbursements for debt service oftentimes exceed funds specifically earmarked for them.

He charged that the President has gone overboard in using her veto power by shooting down the special budget provision banning the use of debt service funds for loans challenged by civil society groups as wasteful and useless.

Pimentel said this means that the government will continue to pay loans for projects which have turned sour and did not benefit the country at all. He said lawmakers wanted these projects investigated due to allegations of anomalies.

"The veto of this special provision overturns the desire of Congress to provide or augment funds for essential and productive projects out of savings from the debt service payments that are disallowed," he said.

Had the President not vetoed this provision, this would have prevented the government from servicing loans for defective projects such as the procurement of medical incinerators which failed to meet the standards of the Clean Air Act and Telepono sa Barangay, now a white elephant.


Link: http://www.senate.gov.ph/press_release/2008/0324_pimentel1.asp

The People Must Remind the President of Her Obligation to Public Trust

Statement of FSGO

We are former senior government officials who from experience know that
strong democratic institutions are crucial to our progress as a whole nation.
The most important institution our people depend on is the Office of the
President. The responsible exercise of Presidential power is an important
instrument for serving our nation's interests. A President that leads with
righteousness and wisdom is a great blessing. A President that serves evil is
a terrible curse. To secure a blessing and avoid a curse in the Presidency, the
founding leaders of our democracy established a system of checks and
balances.

The failure of checks and balances on the Presidency has allowed many past
scandals to descend to a limbo of unresolved crimes against the public trust.
Fertilizer scam. Election cheating. Shopping bags of cash in Malacanang.
The NBN-ZTE scandal is just the latest monster in a larger pile of garbage
from previous scandals. Our people are not going to let this one slip into the
limbo again. Our search for truth, accountability and reforms must advance
by getting our institutions to confront and resolve the corruption and cover
up of this deal.

Our people have asked: Is President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo part of the
NBN-ZTE corruption and cover up? She must act to help bring out the full
truth about this deal if her hands are truly clean. The Arroyo Presidency
must shelter the truth or it will be judged as a fortress for lies.
Our previous statement asked the President to take actions that were
intended to demonstrate that indeed, like the people, she is against
corruption and is angry at those engaged in it. Ordinary citizens can
recognize the actions we asked of the President as reasonable under the
present conditions: let the primary witness, Secretary Neri, testify without
limitation; surrender all pertinent public documents on the deal to the
Senate; follow usual administrative procedures by placing under preventive
suspension those people under a cloud of doubt while an investigation is
proceeding.

Since the President had already cancelled a deal that she judged tainted by
corruption, these actions are logical and prudent. We demanded these
actions not as an interest group but as a straightforward way for Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo to demonstrate that she is a blessing not a curse in the
Office of the President. We got involved because we saw it as our civic duty
to help start the repair and rehabilitation of our institutions already severely
damaged from past scandals. By doing the actions we called for, the
President would have shown her respect of the system of checks and balance
of our democracy by cooperating fully with the Senate to give our people the
full picture of the corruption and cover up of the NBN-ZTE deal.
Even as we issued our statement, however, the President's spokepersons
were summarily dismissing these demands. Later her advisers even
criticized and threatened us for making these demands. The President is very
poorly served by these spokespersons and advisers.

Revoking EO 464 does not serve the truth if Neri still invokes executive
privilege and does not testify and, if, despite previous statements to the
contrary, all records of the NBN-ZTE project have still not been submitted
to the Senate. We believe the Supreme Court or the Senate must do their
respective duties to serve the truth, but the President has a greater obligation.
She has the greatest stake in the Senate investigation coming out with the
truth or the people will conclude she hides behind lies and uses the power of
her office to smother the truth.

We conclude that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo refuses to serve the
people's demand for truth about a matter of great public interest. We see in
this refusal, despite ample chances and many sound reasons, a clear basis for
our people to find her complicit with and, in fact, at the center of, the
corruption and cover up of the NBN-ZTE deal.

We express our loss of confidence in her. As a consequence wequestion not
only her moral authority to govern, but also her ability to govern given the
mounting garbage of lies and obfuscation that she is constrained to build to
cover up the increasing stench of corruption in her administration.

We ask those directly appointed by the President if they believe, in their
heart of hearts, that they are keeping faith with their signed oath to defend
and protect the nation¢s Constitution and its laws in the face of blatant,
shameless corruption and violation of individual rights.

We ask those in the civil service and foreign service to examine their
conscience to discern if their continued service in this Administration is not
in fact helping prop up a regime that, at best abets large-scale corruption, lies
and coverup, and at worst is a party to them.

We call on our fellow citizens to press their demand for a just resolution of
governance issues and violation of the public trust raised against the
President.

For our part, we pledge to use our combined knowledge, capabilities and
influence to help as many of our people understand the issues and explain
the known facts surrounding the many instances of corruption and encourage them to act in accordance with the dictates of their consciense.
We shall work with other sectors to put forward and apply other measures to
make our other democratic institutions work better in preventing, exposing
and punishing corruption at any level of our government starting at the very
top.

Fighting Corruption is never Harmful to the Economy

Fighting Corruption is never Harmful to the Economy

We are former senior economic officials who have devoted ourselves to understanding
the Philippine economy and the various challenges it faces. We do not play politics. We do not ask anything for ourselves. Our objective is a truly sound and sustainable economy – one built on truth, honesty and hard work worthy of all decent Filipinos.

The Arroyo Administration tells us that the economy is on a momentum; that it has given us an unprecedented 28 quarters of uninterrupted growth; that the economy has grown its fastest in the last 31 years. And this is because, she says, the President focuses on the economy like "a laser beam". These insistent reminders are made to counter the widespread clamor for truth and accountability in government in the wake of the NBNZTE scandal and following many other unresolved corruption scandals of this
administration. The public demand for government to fight corruption is dismissed as
merely the efforts of oppositionists and destabilizers who cannot wait for the 2010
elections. Some elements in the business sector are even arguing that we should not rock the boat when we are moving ahead so well; that mounting demands for truth and
accountability in government can only risk losing the economic gains we have already
made.

From our knowledge about our economy, we judge these sentiments to be mere politics,
and the worst type of politics at that. Corruption is never good for the economy.
Corruption in the Office of the President is a curse on our economy. Fighting corruption, therefore, never harms the economy. Any economic gains based on corruption in government are mere illusions, are of limited benefit, and cannot last. Only transparency, accountability and fair play are enduring foundations for a strong economy.

No, our economy is not gaining momentum. First, there is growing concern among
experts about glaring and unprecedented inconsistencies in official statistics on growth, income and poverty that raise doubts about the reliability of the economic growth data. Second, even recent official poverty statistics affirm that whatever economic growth was achieved in the past 5 years has benefited only a few. Third, this "growth" had even swelled the ranks of the poor by almost four million additional Filipinos. Poverty has risen not only in absolute numbers, but in relative terms as well, with the proportion of poor families rising from 24 percent to 27 percent between 2003 and 2006. Our economy cannot gain momentum when its actual growth is much lower than its reported numbers, when whatever growth occurred benefited only a few, when more Filipinos slide into poverty despite this growth.

Mrs. Arroyo's economy is just a "power point mirage", good for presentations in airconditioned conference rooms but false and fake to ordinary Filipinos struggling to make a living. It is against this public relations fakery that our people now demand the truth and accountability about massive corruption from the Office of the President. Corruption has taken a heavy toll on the economy, and its worst victims are the poor who are deprived of vital social services that the stolen billions could have funded.

No country ever built a strong and vibrant economy on the corruption, lies and abuses of its leaders. Without people's trust in their government, our economy will struggle to survive and remain on shaky ground. For an economy to flourish and remain strong,
policies, laws and contracts must be enforced and respected, transactions must be
transparent, the playing field must be level, and fair competition must prevail. A
government that governs based on truth and accountability proceeds from fundamental
values that must be served first and foremost, before we can ever attain a vigorous
economy that will truly uplift the lives of every Filipino long into the future.

[Signed by FSGO Economic Cluster Members]

Citizens’ initiative to audit public debt ignored by Palace

The Freedom from Debt Coalition today lambasted Malacañang for brushing off the initiative of various groups and concerned citizens who recently created an independent commission that will investigate all illegitimate loan-financed projects and programs that the present and past administrations have contracted through the years.

Malacañang reacted to the creation of the Independent Citizens' Debt Audit Commission, stressing there is no need to put up an independent audit body because the country's debt is already shrinking.  The people's commission was launched Monday with a least 30 people of proven probity, credibility and expertise, and coming from different sectors of society took their oath as members of the commission.

Lidy Nacpil, FDC vice president and member of the commission, said the reduction is negligible and not based on sustainable factors.

"Besides, the issue is not just on the amounts, but on the anomalous and illegitimate nature of the debts," she stressed.

Nacpil reiterated that the apparent slight decrease in our total debt stock is because of two factors: the weakening of the US dollar worldwide; and, prepayment of debts.

"As we have said before, the Arroyo administration keeps describing this phenomenon as the strengthening of the Philippine peso. The more accurate term is the weakening of the US dollar against nearly all other currencies. In fact, the Philippine peso is one of the last to appreciate against the US dollar. The change in the dollar-peso exchange rates logically resulted in a lower peso equivalent of the country's foreign debt," she said.

Further, taking advantage of the low dollar-peso rates and claiming that the country is "awash with dollars," the government prepaid at least US$220 million of debts claimed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and US$72 million claimed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

"The government alleges that this move is good because it saves the country several millions in interest payments. The irony is that the country continues to borrow in huge amounts. The truth is this: the government again chooses to prioritize its commitments to foreign lenders over that of its people's urgent needs. The funds used to prepay these debts could have been used to expand health services, build classrooms and low cost housing, guarantee affordable access to clean water, provide support services for our farmers and raise the efficiency and sufficiency of the country's food production," she stressed.

To date, the National Government has a debt of P3.78 trillion or $81.6 billion. Our total consolidated public sector debt as of percentage to our Gross Domestic Product (GCP) is 81.9 percent. These mean public debt claimed from each Filipino, from new-born to the dying, is as much as P43,487, paying P7,012 annually to service the debt. The Philippine government, using citizens' money, shells out P1.1 million every minute just to service the country's debt.

During the public launching of the citizens' commission, University of the Philippines Prof. Randy David stressed that "the public debt issue is the most highly concealed crime of the state against its people."

"In a period when our government institutions lack integrity and credibility to undertake impartial investigations on loan-financed projects and programs marred with anomaly and fraud, people should actively engage to address this problem. We owe it to the next generation of Filipinos who will shoulder the burden of paying these debts," said Prof. David.

He added that critical analysis of the public debt system is one of the most powerful ways to reveal the flaws and malfunctions in governance.

Milo Tanchuling, FDC secretary-general, explained the citizens' commission aims to conduct a critical, comprehensive, participatory and transparent examination of the Philippine public debt and contingent liabilities based on testimonies and inputs from affected communities, data and studies to be submitted  by resource persons and organizations, and researches prepared by working groups and technical teams. It also aims to formulate policy proposals and recommendations for action.
 
"With Rodolfo 'Jun' Lozada's revelation on the aborted $329 million ZTE-NBN deal, the Philippines' debt problem and the continued accumulation of illegitimate debts has once again been put in the spotlight," said Tanchuling.
 
The Commission, created through a petition initiated by the People Against Illegitimate Debt (PAID!), is also charged with recommending immediate steps as well as far-reaching solutions towards eradicating the debt burden and correcting structural and systemic flaws and deficiencies that contributed to debt accumulation and domination.
 
The examination of structural issues shall not be confined in the Philippine system alone but will also address the international financial architecture, said Tanchuling.
 
The audit shall examine not only the responsibility and culpability of the Philippine government and related institutions, but also address the responsibility and culpability of international financial institutions and other lenders, he added.
 
Aside from Prof. David and Nacpil, other inducted members of the Independent Citizens' Debt Audit Commission include: former Vice President Teofisto Guingona, former Senator Wigberto Tanada, Bishop Efraim Tendero, Dr. Sixto K. Roxas, Fr. Ben Moraleda (CSsR), Sr. Cres Lucero (SFIC), former Representative Mayong Aguja, , Former FDC president Ana Maria R. Nemenzo, Dr. Sylvia Estrada-Claudio, Atty. Antonio Oposa, Dr. Grace Jamon, Atty. Golda Benjamin, Dr. Aurora Parong, Dr. Emmanuel Luna.

Economics Prof. Joseph Lim, Atty. Ibarra Gutierrez, Atty. Mari Paz Luna-Severino, Prof. Eduardo Tadem, Atty. Teddy Pascua, Mr. Eribert Padilla, Ms. Vaupet Pena representing the youth sector, Mr. Vic Fabe representing the farmers and fisherfolk, Teacher Benjo Basas, and representatives from the labor and urban poor sectors.
 
Tanchuling said the citizen commission will complement the highly awaited Congressional auditing of public debt by raising questions beyond the limits of the parliamentary initiatives, and by putting forward recommendations sourced from the people's standpoint on the problem.
 
Tanchuling confirmed that Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman has re-filed a joint resolution pushing for an official Congressional Audit of Public Debt and Contingent Liabilities in the House of Representatives.
 
"While we are pushing for the official debt audit, we believe that an independent citizen's audit is also crucial," he said.