EDITORIAL - Abolishing the PS-DBM

With a new Congress, a new scandal is rocking the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management. After being implicated in questionable purchases made in behalf of the Department of Health at the height of the COVID pandemic in 2020, the PS-DBM is again facing a Senate grilling, this time for laptops distributed by the Department of Education to public school teachers for blended learning during the pandemic.

The latest scandal has reinforced calls for the abolition of the PS-DBM, with agencies handling their own procurements. In the previous administration, DOH officials had explained that they tapped the PS-DBM to obtain the needed supplies for COVID response because the agency was deemed to have the expertise in procurements. And since the agency is under the DBM, fund disbursements for the procurements would be facilitated, the DOH officials explained.

Crooks in government, however, have always seen opportunities for illegal profits in the procurement of supplies and services. There are laws on government procurements, but crooks drawn by potentially huge kickbacks or payoffs still find ways of going around the rules. And if procurement is concentrated in one office, the opportunities grow exponentially.

It is no coincidence that in the Armed Forces of the Philippines, a comptroller, Carlos Garcia, was indicted for plunder and money laundering. Although he received a lighter sentence last July after he pleaded guilty to direct bribery and facilitating money laundering, Garcia was slapped a whopping fine of P407.8 million by the Sandiganbayan.

As indicated in the Senate probe on equipment procured for the COVID response, even the deadly pandemic failed to cripple the crooks. At the heart of that scandal involving billions worth of personal protective equipment supplied by Pharmally Pharmaceuticals Corp. was the PS-DBM. Now come the questions arising from the procurement of “pricey” but slow laptops for teachers.

The PS-DBM would only acknowledge “honest mistakes” in the procurement of the laptops. Meanwhile, Lloyd Christopher Lao, who headed the PS-DBM when it procured the PPEs from Pharmally, has asked the Senate Blue Ribbon committee for clearance to travel abroad. This would be a bad idea, considering the anomalies suspected in the procurements during his watch. Carlos Garcia’s co-accused – his wife Clarita and their sons Carl, Juan Paulo and Timothy Mark – are at large and the cases against them have been temporarily archived. All the questions about the health and education supplies should first be cleared before Lao is allowed to travel.

At the same time, the proposal to abolish the PS-DBM deserves serious consideration. Each agency knows best the supplies that it needs. If speed and efficiency in fund releases for supply procurements are the reasons for tapping the PS-DBM, these should be designed into the systems of individual agencies in coordination with the DBM.