Arroyo creates 2 bodies to ensure transparency, good governance

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on Wednesday evening announced the creation of two government bodies tasked to ensure transparency and good governance in massive investments entered into by the government. In a speech delivered at a peace forum in Malacanang, President Arroyo said the Cabinet approved on Tuesday the establishment of the Procurement Transparency Board (PTB) to “ensure transparency and good governance in our massive public investments." The Cabinet also formed the Pro-Performance Infrastructure Monitoring Group (PIMG) which was mandated to ensure compliance with contract terms and timetables of big government projects. “Even the World Bank and the ADB (Asian Development Bank) say that – invest in education and health care and invest heavily in roads, bridges and vital services. This is what the people of the nation deserve. And I would like to report that to ensure transparency and good governance in our massive public investments, we are creating… a procurement transparency group," President Arroyo said. Specifically, the PTB - placed under the Government Procurement Policy Board – was tasked to “monitor procurement bidding and report anomalies to agency heads as well as governance bodies like the Ombudsman and the Commission on Audit." The PTB will be chaired by the Department of Budget and Management, and have members from the Justice, Interior and Local Government, and the economic planning departments. Members will also include representatives of civil society organizations for procurement reform, which trains and fields external observers in government and awards committee nationwide. On the other hand, PIMG was directed to “harness civil society and the private sector in ensuring that public works projects serve the needs and objectives for which they are undertaken, and contract terms and timetables are complied with." The creation of these bodies came amidst clamor for the scrapping of the $329-million national broadband contract awarded by the government to Chinese firm ZTE Corp. The contract, signed last April, has been hit by allegations of graft, with the country’s top election official accused of offering bribes to have the project approved. Critics of the project scored the government for entering into the deal that allegedly violates constitutional and statutory prescriptions on incurring public debt and contracting and/or guaranteeing foreign loans, saying the contract obliges the government to incur millions of dollars in foreign loan. They also allege that the contract was awarded without competitive, transparent and public bidding. - GMANews.TV