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PRESIDENT Benigno S. C. Aquino III will deliver his 6th
and last State of the Nation Address (SONA) today, and it is a relatively safe
guess that its general outline will be a report of achievements over the past
five years and what the administration intends to achieve in its final 11 months.
Reviewing the past five SONAs, 2010 to 2014, it appears
that in his first SONA in 2010, the President wanted to affirm the liberal
ideals of a limited and clean government, dynamic market, and principled civil
society. The President is from the Liberal Party, not from a nationalist or
socialist party and somehow, those ideals should be reflected in his policy
formulations.
The succeeding SONA from 2012 to 2014 focused more on the
various welfare and subsidy programs of the administration, especially the
implementation of the conditional cash transfer program. Liberalism in theory
is not focused on heavy state welfare and political populism as these are the
realm of socialism and conservatism. Liberalism is about having rule of law,
government as enabler, judge, and policeman of the people’s three basic rights
and freedom -- right to private property, right to life against aggressors, and
right to liberty against dictators and bullies.
Public-private partnerships (PPPs) were among the salient
pronouncements and promises of the President’s first SONA 2010. In particular:
1. Expressways: “Some… want to build an expressway from
Manila that will pass through Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Nueva Vizcaya, until the
end of Cagayan Valley, without the government having to spend a single peso.”
2. National defense. “Some... will rent the Navy
headquarters on Roxas Boulevard and the Naval Station in Fort Bonifacio. They
will take care of the funding necessary to transfer the Navy Headquarters to
Camp Aguinaldo. Immediately, we will be given $100 million.”
3. Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT): “Projects will undergo
quick and efficient processes…. a process that used to take as short as a year
and as long as a decade will now only take six months.”
4. Business registration: “The never-ending horror story
of registering business names, which used to take a minimum of four to eight
hours depending on the day, will be cut down drastically to fifteen minutes.
What used to be a check list of 36 documents will be shortened to a list of
six, and the old eight-page application form will be whittled down to one
page.”
Among the bills that Mr. Aquino sought from Congress were
the Antitrust Law (“No monopolies, no cartels that kill competition”) and
Whistleblower’s Bill “to eradicate the prevalent culture of fear and silence
that has hounded our system. From 2009 to 2010 alone, cases which involved the
participation of witnesses under the Witness Protection Program resulted in a
ninety-five percent conviction.”
The four items above are consistent with liberalism, of
lesser government intervention and more private enterprises involvement and
dynamism. Also the two (and more) legislative measures.
After five years, from July 2010 to July 2015, were those
four (and more) plans and promises fulfilled? Were those legislative proposals
enacted into laws?
This writer interviewed Communications Secretary Herminio
B. Coloma, Jr. of the Presidential Communications Operations Office about some
of those issues. In particular, about #4, the business bureaucracies. Mr.
Coloma said that after SONA 2010, “DTI buckled down to work immediately to
simplify business registration procedures. The Philippine Economic Zone
Authority also introduced minimum procedures in business registrations.”
The World Bank has been producing an important study, the
Doing Business (DB) annual reports, on how easy or difficult it is to do
business in different countries. Here is a summary on the Philippines. The
fourth column is not part of the report, it is only added here for a comparison
of positive changes or improvements, and reduction in bureaucracies; a negative
figure means deterioration or increase in bureaucracies. (See chart)
So it is true, after five years, the Philippines’ overall
global ranking in “Ease of Doing Business” has improved by 49 notches. In
particular, to start a new business, there is a reduction of 18 days and to get
construction permits, there is a reduction of 109 days, after five years. These
are good improvements.
Mr. Coloma also mentioned the Civil Service Commission’s
(CSC) Citizen’s Satisfaction Center Seal of Excellence, wherein government
offices are rated by the public through a Report Card Survey.
Apparently, Item #s 1 and 2 in SONA 2010, the expressway
to Cagayan Valley and rental of Navy HQ in Roxas Boulevard, did not take off.
Item #3 on BOT seems to be on track as there are plenty
of big PPP projects that are on-stream or being implemented. These include the
North-South Railway Project, NLEx-SLEx Connector Road, and NAIA Development.
PPP projects for approval include LRT Lines 4 and 6, and the Batangas-Manila
(BatMan) 1 natural gas pipeline project.
The proposed Whistleblower’s Law is still pending in
Congress, and it is hoped that it will become law before the end of Mr.
Aquino’s term and of the current Congress.
We also asked Mr. Coloma why Mr. Aquino doesn’t seem too
enthusiastic in the moves to amend the Constitution and remove economic restrictions
like the prohibition or limitation of foreign investments in certain sectors
and sub-sectors of the economy.
Mr. Coloma said “the President has adopted a hands-off
stance so far, [is] not against it but reasonably open to it.” He added that
the President is just being careful because Congress might interpret it
differently and this might lead to a comprehensive amendment of the charter,
not just the economic provisions.
Looking up to SONA 2015, what would be the outlook for
the Palace in the next 11 months?
Mr. Coloma expressed the hope that certain priority bills
would become law, like the Rationalization of Fiscal Incentives, the Tax
Incentives Management and Transparency Act, and others. He also pointed out the
continuing need for good governance, transparency, and institutional moorings.
It should be noted that there is more emphasis on “good
governance” by the Palace as the political heat leading to the 2016
presidential election rises. The liberal ideals of limited government and, by
extension, “less governance” has been muted.
The political opposition and militant civil society do
not show any interest in limited government. On the contrary, they show
voracious appetite for further expansion of government, provided that they are
the ones occupying high government positions.
Between a liberal government with muted aspiration for
more market competition and a political opposition with expressed desire for a
more welfarist, more populist and interventionist government, the public have a
choice.
If they wish to see a more dynamic, more competitive
private enterprise, they should call for less governance. If they wish to try a
welfarist, interventionist government system, the case of Greece and its huge
debt and fiscally unstable economy should be a gentle reminder of the danger of
this option.
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See also:
BWorld 9, Poitical populism vs. tax realism, July 05, 2015
BWorld 10, Greece crisis, pension and rule of law, July 11, 2015
BWorld 11, China's stockmarket and central planning, July 18, 2015
BWorld 12, Investments, APEC and economic liberalization, July 25, 2015
Fat-Free Econ 17: SONA, the Budget and Debt, July 22, 2012
The President's SONA, 2010, July 26, 2010
The President's SONA 2011, July 24, 2011
The President's SONA 2011, part 2, July 26, 2011
The President's SONA 2011, July 24, 2011
The President's SONA 2011, part 2, July 26, 2011
The President's SONA 2012, July 23, 2012
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