CalPERS consultant’s RP report up for review

Following the controversy over erroneous reports that prompted it to delist the Philippines from its investment portfolio, the California Public Employees Retirement Fund (CalPERS) has directed its consultant, Wilshire & Associates, to deal directly with the Philippine government to review and validate its findings.

The decision was made by the CalPERS board of directors after Finance Secretary Jose Isidro Camacho met with top company officials and members of the board in a bid to prevent the recurrence of the controversy.

According to Camacho, who just arrived from the final leg of his US trip early this week, his meeting with CalPERS directors as well as chief executive officer Fred R. Buenrostro Jr., were "encouraging".

"They were very supportive and they encouraged us to work with Wilshire and its third party consultants to validate the information that they are using to make their reports to the CalPERS board," Camacho said.

According to Camacho, the Department of Finance would form a team to sit down with Whilshire and the third party consultants whose report to the CalPERS board serves as the basis for the country’s inclusion or exclusion from the fund’s list of "permissive countries."

Camacho said the government wants to go over the report line by line to ensure that Wilshire gets it right when it makes its annual evaluation report.

In the meantime, Camacho said the Philippines is back in the permissive country list at least for this year.

"We have between now and next year to institute a mechanism for making the process more transparent where we would be given the opportunity to give them access to first hand information," Camacho said.

The Arroyo administration, however, did not push for the demand of the Philippine Supreme Court for a public apology from Wilshire Associates for branding the judiciary as corrupt and incompetent.

The High Tribunal was one of the government institutions that Wilshire tagged as "heavily backlogged and rife with corruption", saying that the "poor had no access to justice since it is the wealthy and powerful few who can manipulate judges."

Incensed by the report, Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide wrote a strongly-worded letter, demanding a public apology from Wilshire while rebutting its evaluation which the Philippine review said was based not on first-hand information but on an opinion poll conducted by the Makati Business Club two years ago,

In his letter to the CalPERS board, Camacho said that the results of the review indicated that the score of 1.46 given to the Philippines by Wilshire should be much higher after the necessary adjustments for correct information.