Financial housekeeping needed

True to the blood Filipinos are generally clueless and ignorant about financial housekeeping. We are not raised and enabled to generate or create money, we are not taught anything about budgets, savings and accounting through most of our years in school and this results in personal and governmental failures in financial management.

Last Monday, the Philippine STAR headlined the discovery that many local governments from provincial to municipal levels are broke, over borrowed and facing almost impossible odds that newly elected officials will ever get to the bottom of how the money was carelessly spent or stolen. For the most part, it has been a case of spend all the money since it was meant for “our” administration. Let the new one worry where to get their budget as well as whatever loans “we” entered into. The strange thing about it all, is that the discoveries come far too late and too little. While I am all for local government autonomy or independence, it is becoming clearer with every local administration that autonomy also means autonomy to squander or steal taxpayers money, autonomy to misuse and misrepresent with no up-to-date or real time check and balance on allocation and expenses. The conspiracy of the elected automatically defeats any protocol on integrity.

While many agencies have a counterpart body representing the Commission on Audit, I have the impression that as far as the local or national government is concerned, the COA often determines errors or horrors after 6 months to two years. By then, the long gone politicians or political appointees have managed to cover their tracks or make themselves scarce to the frustration of bean counters and trackers. Has anybody ever heard of the concept of “prior approval” where these very agencies or local governments won’t be allowed to make budgets, allocate funds or take out loans until they submit and have passed a review under the Department of Finance, the National Economic Development Authority or NEDA, COA, the DILG and or the Office of the President.

While oppositionists to the proposal may scream interference, the growing nightmare of financial mismanagement, bad loans and misdeeds are more than enough proof that there are no real gate keepers or effective check and balance to prevent unscrupulous local government officials from stealing or squandering taxpayers money!

Just last year, I wrote about how several Governors and Mayors have gone for the “Hook, Line, and sinker” of certain banks who lent them money to the tune of 1 billion pesos. The loans got exceptionally easy approval. But many local accountants will tell you that they will be exceptionally difficult to service because in order to prioritize their payment, some form of service or project will have to be reduced or stopped. The fact that certain Senators and members of the House of Representatives have been dragged into the “Pork Barrel scam” shows that there is a serious need for stronger financial controls and better fund management. The impression that various government departments and agencies can be scammed or sweettalked into forking over millions if not billions into the Pork Barrel Scam are serious enough allegations that demand a very careful, scientific and legal study in order to legislate tighter and tougher measure against scams and squandering of public funds or sinking the government into debt!

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Yesterday, I was reminded of another company in the pre-need plans industry that has squandered the money of investors and now gets a slap on wrist as they are allowed by government to pay back P30,000 for every million peso invested. If you think that’s an insult, talk to vendors who saved P25,000 for years in order to pay for educational plans only to be paid back P1,200, which does not even cover the cost of transportation, food and hypertension medicines they needed since the company folded up.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that the Insurance Commission whose only real service is to subdivide and distribute the crumbs and leftovers from what has been misappropriated or stolen, actually gave its seal of approval for the company to pay only a tiny morsel from the fortune they made. I don’t call that prudential I call it robbery when the government and Congress are both guilty of the betrayal of public trust for never ever sending someone to jail!

For all the scams and rip-offs that have taken place in the United States, I can at least say that their Justice Department has sent people to jail. Whether they sent members of the Mafia or financial scumbags, the US DOJ have made criminals pay. This is because in the United States, Congress has managed to pass laws to make sure crooks and con artists do time. Unfortunately in the Philippines, the laws are soft and easy on the rich while making it almost impossible for ordinary folks to file cases because the filing fees alone would be impossible to raise for victims who’ve already been robbed of their heard earned money if not their life savings. Filing fees should be waived for complainant-victims of large-scale estafa. I would even go so far to suggest that when more than a dozen individuals have been scammed, the DOJ should be mandated to take up the case in court instead of leaving the poor victims to a second round of financial burdens.

The law on estafa should also be rewritten so that such cases where corporations or individuals lose or squander investor’s money would be classified as economic sabotage! By rewriting the law corporate pilferers can’t protect themselves or their personal assets and they would have to automatically go to jail! We are not playing a game of Monopoly. This is real life and real money and in the real world, crooks must go to jail and stay there!

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