By ALECKS P. PABICO

BACK in May, speculations were rife that Romulo L. Neri was returning to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) as director general and socioeconomic planning secretary by August. The nasty rumor had so distressed some at NEDA that on a bulletin board next to the ground floor elevator lobby that had been turned into a sort of freedom wall was posted this note from an anonymous commenter:

"I don't think bringing back Neri to NEDA will be good for the agency. We are now finding out that he maintained a group of advisers/consultants in the likes of Jun Lozada who seemed to act as fixers/moderators of greed. Imagine that! Neri seemed to be running another office corresponding with NEDA staffs whose sole purpose was to take charge of the wheeling and dealing in government. Shall we allow that again?"

Understandably, the NEDA staff could only breathe a sigh of relief at the recent Malacañang announcement that their former chief is headed to the Social Security System (SSS) as its new administrator although they remain wary that defeated 2007 administration senatorial bet, former Senator Ralph Recto, would be appointed as the next director general.

Meanwhile, back in the public limelight, Neri has begged his critics to first check the data about his qualifications before assailing his new appointment. His record in government, he said, could speak for itself, pointing naysayers to how he had performed in various capacities in different agencies as director general of NEDA, as secretary of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), and more recently as chairman of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED).

"I think I performed satisfactorily," claimed Neri. Asserting that he is qualified to head the SSS, he then rattled off, in his usual subdued estimation of his self-worth, his track record in investment banking and pension fund management, backed no less by a masteral degree in business administration, major in finance and international management from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).

Neri will assume the SSS post on Aug. 1, taking over from Corazon de la Paz who served for seven years. The SSS administers the assets and contributions, currently worth P248 billion, of some 27 million members.

Though De la Paz cited health reasons for her resignation, her replacement had politics written all over it. De la Paz first intimated how she has not been able to accustom herself to the workings of government, indicating a preference to return to her work in the private sector. But upon further questioning by the media, she eventually relented to a little known fact: she had stood up against the use of SSS members' funds for the government's pro-poor agenda, in the process offending the powers that be.

"Using the fund has limits. (It) cannot be used to finance pro-poor projects of the government unless it is defined in the (SSS) Charter," De la Paz explained, serving up a warning to SSS members and the public of the potential danger of the fund being misused.

With Neri at the helm of the SSS, many have indeed expressed fears that the funds will be used for partisan political interests. Avowals to the contrary have not help assuage these fears for the very reason that the appointment boils down not much to the issue of competence but to Neri's integrity and credibility, including that of the person who appointed him.

By all means, Neri, born February 1, 1950 possesses the sterling academic competence in his field of expertise. He holds a degree in business administration, major in marketing from the University of the Philippines where he graduated magna cum laude and class valedictorian.

His first government job was as director general of the congressional planning and budget office (CPBO) of the House of Representatives in 1990. As CPBO chief until 2002, he dispensed advice to House leaders on socioeconomic issues, in particular monetary and financial policies, development financing, and the national government budget.

Erstwhile colleagues at the CPBO recall their former director general in high regard. "He was very professional, very broadminded, straightforward," said Rodolfo Vicerra, who was at the time the CPBO's executive director and who later assumed Neri's post when he left in 2002.

Though Neri's training was in finance, he understood the workings of macro-economy, says Vicerra. "His long stay in Congress allowed him to read a lot of books, particularly on economics, so much so that he has become a champion of competition and the market that many formally trained economists would care to admit," he says.

It was at the CPBO where Neri started nurturing the advocacies for which he has come to be known for, like going against anti-competitive, monopolistic and oligarchic structures, regulatory capture, and anything that would limit the efficiency of the economy.

In 2002, Neri earned his first appointment as NEDA director general, a post he would return to on February 5, 2006 after a brief stint as budget secretary in 2005. At the national socioeconomic planning agency, Neri distinguished himself as a NEDA chief with wide academic and policy background, particularly in finance, public policy, and microeconomics.

"He had more of a microeconomic bent in the work of NEDA, particularly in microeconomic analysis at the firm level, which made us work with emphasis on knowing more sector and inter-sector-specific details," says a senior director who has been with NEDA since 1989 during the last months of Solita Monsod's term as director general.

Such emphasis, the director adds, required from the NEDA staff to have ready in-depth sectoral knowledge when Neri reviewed and discussed with them, in contrast to the normal process of first going back to client agencies to get more information.

Neri's microinterventions had at times meant going outside the purview of NEDA's primary work or mandate, which essentially involved preparing and coordinating the country's socioeconomic and development plans. One staff recalls, for instance, an Asian Development Bank-funded project that Neri pushed to strengthen the provincial planning process, which, to him, was rendered ineffective by the lack of technical know-how and budgeting focus of local government planners.

Known to be impatient with bureaucratic inertia, Neri had also caused the resuscitation of inactive government bodies like the Philippine Export-Import Credit Agency (Philexim) to help finance infrastructure projects. He also maximized the use of the industrial guarantee and loans fund to address even issues considered marginal to NEDA's functions, for instance, increasing the productivity of coconut farmers.

"He thinks 'outside the box,'" another NEDA staff says, an indication of his rather consuming interest in what works while being fully aware of how institutions take a long time to reform.

Only that Neri's tour of duty at NEDA had more than just this endearing facet of a maverick technocrat to it, and which should be instructive as to how he would conduct himself over at the SSS.

Top-level officials at NEDA have commended Neri's preference for a "more horizontal working relationship" with the management and staff, which they say was what made him work "more easily and directly with people than through structures."

"The time that he was in NEDA," shares the same senior management official, "he was to me more on 'leading than managing' as he left to the career officials in the secretariat the latter function to exercise more decentrally."

That, however, did not appeal to many at NEDA who saw how Neri was unlike his predecessors, who were more accessible to the agency's rank-and-file. Not a few NEDA staff have observed how he was not into employee relations, exerting no effort to connect, dialogue, or reach out to them. They say he also wasn't as concerned with the internal operations of the office, both in administrative and personnel matters despite his heavy dependence on their technical outputs.

Says Edwin Daiwey, acting assistant director of the Development Information Staff: "He was more technocratic in the sense that his concerns were more on what the staff produced but less on how they could be motivated to work better in terms of improved remuneration, the working environment, and working relationships."

In contrast to former directors general , Neri also rarely held meetings with senior officials which would have served as venues to discuss or thresh out important issues affecting the agency.

As such, Neri's term, Daiwey adds, marked the unraveling of the strong teamwork ethic that used to be the hallmark of NEDA. Such a situation had subsequently led to squabbles among his deputies and staffs.

If the relationship had been somewhat distant and tentative, this was probably because many in NEDA regarded Neri as an "outsider."