THE Marcos government should revisit the system of transferring huge funds from departments to two State agencies, as well as the ensuing de facto centralized procurement of “common” goods and services, both to reduce risk of corruption and ensure that scarce taxpayer money is being used in the most cost-efficient way possible.
This point was raised at the weekend by Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, amid calls for investigations in both chambers of Congress of the Commission on Audit reports flagging the multibillion-peso purchase of laptops for teachers during the pandemic.
“At this point, I support an investigation,” said the senator, but added that he particularly wants to find out why “many agencies, not just the Department of Education, pass on their procurement to the PS-DBM,” the controversial unit of the Department of Budget and Management that was thoroughly investigated last year by the Blue Ribbon panel over some P12 billion in pandemic supply purchases. The PS-DBM received over P42 billion in funds from the Department of Health, which outsourced the procurement to it.
In an interview with DWIZ, Sen. Gatchalian said that when he was mayor of Valenzuela City, “we never passed on our purchases to the PS-DBM. Even our barangays —an all barangays in the country —have their own BAC [bids and awards committee] and buy their own requirements. So if the argument is they [the agencies transferring funds and procurement tasks] are busy for [such] functions, how come the barangays, municipalities, cities, even provinces can buy their own requirements, using the mechanisms provided by law?”
He stressed, however, that since the law allows agencies to transfer such procurement functions to both the PS-DBM and the Philippine International Trading Center—another agency that senators had tagged as a virtual “parking lot” for billions in idle funds, which allow the transferring department to avoid having to return unused funds to the Treasury—there is “nothing illegal” in the practice.
The problem is, the senator stressed, one, the “lack of accountability” as agencies can keep pointing to the PITC or PS-DBM; and two, the unresolved issue of whether this de facto “centralized procurement” system really helps the government save through wise purchases that maximize the economies of scale, among others.
“I noticed that accountability is lost when it’s easy to point to others,” he said, adding that, “whatever the government agency, whether DepEd or DOTr or Department of Health,” there should be the “capability, the mechanism, for them to buy these goods. So that if there’s a problem, they will answer for it and fix the problem.”
The bottomline of any inquiry, said Gatchalian, is whether or not “there is a benefit in giving funds to PS-DBM and whether the agencies gain an advantage from doing so. Because I see a double handling here. The fund will go to, say DOH, then DOH gives it to PS-DBM, which buys the product and then sends it back to DOH. So there’s double handling.”
And yet, Gatchalian stressed, agencies have “their own administrative office, their own procurement office, their own people who can procure.” Maybe they just need to “improve their capability in purchasing goods so that funds and items don’t have to be transferred so many times,” he added.
While conceding that the upcoming inquiry may inevitably raise anew the role of former PS-DBM chief Lloyd Christopher Lao, whom the Blue Ribbon cited for contempt, Gatchalian said they will “look at the full picture as well,” referring to the “entire
concept of centralized procurement. Because this is what this turning out to be. So the entire national government offices, only one unit buys for them, especially what are called common items.”
Lawmakers in the past have called for the dismantling of both PITC and PS-DBM, saying they have outlived their original mandate and are not really helping government manage its scarce resources efficiently.
