Undisclosed Chinese loan
Every time the Arroyo government goes on a borrowing binge,
it makes an announcement even before the loan is granted.
And when it gets the money, it announces the terms, maturity
and interest rates. Naturally, most of the time the loan is used to refinance an
outstanding obligation.
The $360 million loan from China to build or expand the
National Broadband Network is beginning to take the form of a hidden liability.
The documents covering the loan were signed in China with President Arroyo as a
witness.
But that is about all we have been told. Of course, there was
a shameless admission that the lender of the money will pick the contractor.
The Arroyo government is beginning to make the contractor
appear like he submitted an unsolicited bid. But the company, ZTE, was actually
picked by the Chinese.
Obviously, the intention is to avoid public bidding. If there
is one other thing that the project lacks, it is transparency. The terms and
conditions are kept a secret and forced US Ambassador Kenney to demand
transparency.
Swiss challenge
If it is reasonable to assume that no bidding was called
because the Chinese company submitted an unsolicited bid, the Arroyo government
has to remember that there is such a thing as a "Swiss challenge."
Which means that other interested parties including one from
the US and another from The Netherlands can make their own offer that
understandably should be more advantageous to the government.
But if this is allowed to happen, the government must force
ZTE to reveal the terms of its unsolicited offer.
We have not heard a word from Malacañang that this is the way
it will be done. Which means that as of now, ZTE is the supplier.
The government does not seem to be interested in inviting
other suppliers.
Everything seems to be under wraps. And it might well be,
considering talks about a huge sum to be shared among powerful people. In other
words, the Arroyo government does not want to prove that the deal is
transparent. Maybe because it isn’t.
Repeating a flop
The national expansion of the national broadband has all the
makings of repeating an old communications project intended to open rural areas
to civilization. We remember the "telepono ng bayan".
Well, the bayan is there but where are the telephones? There
are none. The project never ever worked.
The reasons may be too technical for me to understand but the
point is the project never materialized.
The new project, in that sense, is not expansion. It is a new
one that will presumably use satellite facilities. I cannot debate the claim of
government that the ZTE project will save the government about P4 billion a year
in communications expenses.
I will not talk about savings at this time. If I were
involved in the project, I would take pains explaining to the taxpayers what
this project is all about and how they will benefit from it.
The people in the rural are not interested in seeing the
government save money. After all, it has seen cases of outright malversation the
government does not do anything about.
Why is an agent necessary?
With the endorsement of a powerful election official and
approved obviously by the President, a former officer of the Federation of
Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry was given the golden, meaning
dollar, opportunity to help facilitate the loan.
This is a polite word for skimming. Here is a loan the
Philippine government obtained from another sovereign nation. Why should there
be a need for private financial intermediation?
The Arroyo administration has officials who understand
finance and how to borrow money. Why weren’t they used?
Or if these people lack the expertise, there is a horde of
financial intermediaries – local and foreign – who charge a modest fee for
packaging a loan. And they get the best terms for the government in exchange for
the fee paid to them.
In this case, the government chose to have a
Mandarin-speaking Filipino-Chinese as agent. He has not even been identified.
What conclusion can we draw except that big sums – probably
close to a hundred million dollars – will change hands among powerful people?
He who has to do very little work gets the biggest share
because he is the most powerful.
They better keep this away from the First Gentleman. It could
lead to the stress his doctors had warned him about.
Better with the private sector
The two largest telecommunication companies – Smart and Globe
– are said to have agreed to put their resources together to create their own
national broadband.
This plan is remarkably better than the project of the
government because it goes to the barangay.
Anybody who can afford to pay a fee can get a phone or some
such device even if he stays in the mountains.
The project of Smart and Globe can serve the entire nation,
not just the local government units in the remotest of places.
The government says it will save P4 billion a year with its
own system. It has not figured how much it can save getting the service from the
private sector.
It has not occurred to Malacañang that the private project
will open ordinary citizens to what is happening in Imperial Manila by paying a
fee.
And to think that the most common complaint of foreign and
local businessmen is the lack of communications infrastructure. The government
will build one for itself. How about the businessmen and other citizens?
Kid gloves
When one says that somebody is treated with kid gloves, that
means a serious offense is not met with the appropriate legal action.
This might well be the case of charges of money-laundering
against officials of Piatco, Fraport, former DOTC Secretary Pantaleon Alvarez
and his assistant Wilfredo Trinidad.
The Anti-Money Laundering Council was well on its way to
discovering the amounts – and maybe identities of depositors of huge amounts of
money – suspected to be laundered bribes.
Inferior courts stopped the council from pursuing its job.
Then the Supreme Court surprised the suspects by coming out with a unanimous
decision that yes, indeed, the council should proceed with the investigation of
the deposits.
There came an even bigger surprise. The same court reversed
itself and practically set free the suspects from a possible criminal liability.
The suspects are probably sitting tight and pretty. They got
away with it again.
There is reasonable certainty the suspects may not be tried.
The Supreme Court said they should not.
So there goes your anti-money laundering law, interpreted by the courts in
favor of the suspects.
