Useless gov’t agencies

President Duterte did the right thing in practically dismantling a commission supposed to be responsible for the urban poor. The President was peeved that in the short period they have been in power, the head of the commission has traveled abroad seven times.

But then, that is par for the course for many government officials. They say that given their low pay, bumabawi na lang sila sa travel. There is so much needless travel going on in government today. Malacañang should institute better control.

The President said the Palace would now approve all travel orders for bureaucrats. But that is nothing new. The approval of Malacañang had always been needed for a government official to travel abroad. Maybe, the Office of the Executive Secretary had just been too lenient.

Then again, the President had been taking too many hangers-on in his foreign trips too. This is why he has spent more than any past president on trips abroad in his first year.

Other than foreign travel, the President should also do an honest evaluation of the usefulness of many government agencies. Many exist long after they have lost their usefulness.

That commission for the urban poor is a good example. I heard they actually tried to force NGCP to allow back the squatters that caused a fire under one of their towers in Parañaque. How stupid can that be? That compromises the power supply of the Metro area.

There are other examples. The Philippine National Oil Company or PNOC is a GOCC whose usefulness was lost a long time ago. The government agency that is supposed to evaluate GOCCs has not noticed or looked the other way.

After EDSA, the oil industry was deregulated and Petron, PNOC’s main subsidiary, was privatized. Also privatized was PNOC EDC which is in charge of geothermal.

The only useful subsidiary left is PNOC-EC which partners with foreign oil prospectors. But EC doesn’t need PNOC to continue existing. It is an independent corporate entity and was, at one time, even listed in the stock exchange.

The post-EDSA administrations used PNOC as a dumping ground for political allies. Every one of them from Cory to Noynoy appointed people in PNOC who had little or no inkling of what they are supposed to do. Our taxes are wasted for salaries and very generous benefits board members and other officers get.

At one point, they even created a new PNOC subsidiary, the PNOC Alternative Energy Corporation. The son of a congressman from Cavite was appointed to head it. It spent over a billion pesos trying to plant a so-called energy producing plant. It was a big failure and has been abolished.

The other remaining assets of PNOC are the land in Bataan where the Petron refinery is located and another large parcel intended for a petrochemical complex that never materialized. If PNOC is abolished, a small asset management section in DOF should be able to manage the properties.

Officials of useless government agencies try very hard to make themselves appear useful. In PNOC’s case they are attempting to change the terms of reference of the Petron privatization agreement that government signed.

They now want to deny Petron its right to get an automatic renewal of the lease agreement at the same terms. They want to raise the lease for the land which is covered by an evergreen contract under the privatization agreement. Incidentally, Petron just invested $3 billion to upgrade the refinery to produce more gasoline, diesel and LPG.

The land actually belonged to Petron for decades, but when Petron was privatized, government wanted to make sure foreigners bidding won’t have problems due to citizenship restrictions on land ownership. That’s why the sale and automatic lease back arrangement was devised.

If government changes its mind on commitments it has made, who will want to invest here?

Still trying to appear useful, PNOC also wants to build a $2 billion natural gas terminal and has announced its intention to bid this out after failing to get Chinese companies to invest. This project should be left for the private sector to do.

One important reason why this should be a private sector project is government’s proven incompetence in managing vital facilities that are even less complicated. Take NAIA for example.

Are we ready to close down the gas-fired power plants if PNOC can’t store enough spare parts or procure these in a timely manner? NAIA is having problems keeping its air conditioners running because the government procurement process is cumbersome and time consuming. This is an important facility that will provide the fuel to run the gas-fired power plants in Batangas after Malampaya runs out.

Incidentally, PNOC failed big time to build that Batangas to Manila gas pipeline that would have provided fuel for natgas powered buses.

Another useless agency on my list is Transco. From news reports, it wants to become a telco partner of China Telecom. It wants to offer its “dark fiber” but this same asset was already offered by NGCP to DICT for its nationwide broadband projects.

Transco is claiming the dark fiber was not part of its assets leased to NGCP. But that doesn’t seem logical because the idea when its operations were privatized was to lease everything to NGCP.

This is another violation of the original contract. Like in the PNOC-Petron case, there is a lame attempt to make Transco officials seem useful. They are trying very hard to justify their existence. Worse, this conflict between Transco and NGCP on the dark fiber may derail DICT’s ambitious plans to provide nationwide free WiFi connectivity.

In truth, PNOC and Transco were made redundant by the privatization of their operations. We don’t need these useless agencies anymore. The President should start trimming the excess bureaucracy to save money and improve efficiency.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco.