WB governance projects in the Philippines

After posting WB corruption of civil society last week, two things happened. One is that a friend working in WB Manila explained to me the various anti-corruption measures and projects that the bank does and support which will ultimately, limit the expansion of government. And two, I have seen one WB-funded project to assess government procurement of health products, presented this morning.

I was then convinced that somehow, the bank is trying to be serious in reducing corruption in government. It attempts to make government procurement of certain health and other social services as transparent as possible, via electronic posting of information. These include: products and services being procured, from whom, when, legitimacy of the supplier, legitimacy or registration of the product or service being purchased, how much per unit cost, how much total cost, other terms, and so on.

WB lending to the Philippines in social services is huge, around $1.8 B since 2007 alone. Click on this table to view a larger image. I constructed it from the original table in the WB site.

The presentation this morning on corruption in one social service sector is still not available for public release. I don't have the soft copy yet but I can get it once it's been cleared for public release and discussion. When people see those data, I'm sure many of them will get angry at the new set of corruption in government. I was angry when I saw it.

Will post those data later here, probably in more than a week.