RP fails corruption report card

MALACAÑANG has failed in fighting corruption according to the target set by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but only just so.

The Palace on Saturday admitted that it failed to pass the corruption score card by a thin margin and is optimistic of passing the grade this year.

“We were not able to meet the mark on the corruption issue but we missed it by 0.1 percent only,” deputy presidential spokesman for economic affairs Gary Olivar told The Manila Times. “So it is very, very close of what we’ve wanted this year.”

“We will intensify work on the corruption issue,” he added.

“We are meeting almost all of our Millennium Development Goals and in fact during the last review we were able to achieve all our objectives to important indicators that we are monitoring,” he added.

Olivar is confident the country will successfully improved its fight against corruption so it could qualify for bigger grants from the United States government.

“It is timely that we needed this money anyway now that we’re trying to recover and we are investing again in long term goals,” he said “The timing will really come together in terms of resolving the corruption issue once and for all.”

In an earlier interview, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said the government may qualify for a $500-million grant due to improving governance and human rights condition.

Ermita said if the country passes ratings based on a recent World Bank report, “we can very well pass the threshold and before the end of the year we might qualify for such grant from the US government, which is usually anywhere from $300 million to $500 million.”

Ermita, who heads the Task Force on Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), said the World Bank criteria are crucial for developed economies like the United States, the European Community and others in determining their financial assistance to countries like the Philippines.

“The MCA has a lot of significance. We should watch the ratings given us by MCA, a program of the US government and for which the Philippine government can very well benefit from a new form of fund coming from the United States,” Ermita said.

He noted that because the Philippines’ 2008 rating on controlling corruption fell by only 0.1 percent, “we have not been announced as beneficiary of a grant from the US government.”

The MCA grant can go a long way in boosting the Philippine economic status that’s why the country should make it known to the world, the United Nations and the US that it is handling its human rights, corruption issues and extra judicial killing cases very well, he said.

The Philippines advanced in four of six critical dimensions taken up in the World Bank 2008 governance report.  –Angelo Samonte, Reporter, Manila Times