Excuses, excuses, excuses

Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya, in an interview with ABS-CBN’s DZMM anchors said the delays in the implementation of DOTC’s projects are due to the “complicated and sophisticated” process of partnering with the private sector. That’s a brazen excuse for incompetence.

“It’s not as straightforward as buying bond paper. It’s a sophisticated negotiation process with the private sector. Of course from their end they want reasonable return. From our end, we gotta make sure that fares, fees that people will pay will be reasonable, affordable,” Abaya explained in a news conference as reported by Rappler.

I still think it is sheer incompetence of DOTC’s top brass. It isn’t just the complexity of PPP projects. The bidding and awarding of the car plates is pretty straightforward. We have been doing that for years at the LTO level until then Sec. Mar Roxas decided to centralize everything at DOTC.

What do we have as a result? Do-it-yourself car plates! Each new car owner is now required to use pentel pen and cartolina to print the conduction sticker number in place of the usual car plates. Now we are told by Sec Jun Abaya that the new car plates will not be available this month as promised by the DOTC spokesman.

This is sheer incompetence, I say. Abaya claims some problems with DBM on fund sourcing. They can easily find fund sources for pork but not for car plates. I cannot understand the big deal since car owners are paying outrageous prices for those car plates anyway.

From the point of view of taxpaying citizens, we are not concerned which agency of government is remiss… be it DOTC or DBM. All we know is that in the past, we also had delays in issuance of car plates but not to the extent it is now being experienced under the P-Noy watch.

But maybe Sec. Abaya and DOTC shouldn’t bear all the blame. The DBM shares blame for the car plates. The DOF should share the blame for delayed transport infra.

Take that Citra connector road project extolled by P-Noy in his SONA but stalled in the bureaucracy. It is finally approved, or so we hope, as announced last week. P-Noy supposedly gave his final blessing for the project to start.

The project got really delayed not just because two groups made two separate proposals for it. P-Noy quickly settled that problem with a Solomonic decision to have both projects implemented. But DOF Sec. Cesar Purisima is not happy that PNCC, another government entity, is involved in the Citra/San Miguel project.

I have explained the Purisima objection in a previous column. What is relevant here is the time it took to resolve the objection and in the end, the decision was in favor of PNCC anyway. We wasted at least two years as the DOJ was asked to issue one legal opinion after another. 

DOTC is understandably defensive about the delays in their projects. They have cited data from the PPP center that they are not that far from world experience in processing PPP projects. They claim they are so far spending 14 to 18 months in the procurement process, which spans the issuance of invitation to bid up to the issuance of Notice to Proceed or start of construction.

But what Notice to Proceed and start of construction are they talking about? The Daang Hari has been terribly delayed. The LRT1 bidding was a failure. The bidding for the Cavite-Laguna expressway project has been postponed.

The NAIA expressway project has been awarded to San Miguel and the conglomerate has paid P11 billion for the right to do it. But I am not sure government has secured all the right-of-way needed for the project to really get going. Only the DepEd school building projects are on stream.

I may have been the first to notice and sound the alarm on DOTC’s technical deficit (later confirmed by DBM Sec Butch Abad) but now more experts are saying the same thing. My good friend Rene Santiago, a transport consultant respected abroad but ignored here, has called for a regime change at DOTC.

Economist Vic Abola, an economics professor from the University of Asia and the Pacific (UA&P), told PhilStar Business that DOTC’s transport functions should be transferred to DPWH. Inasmuch as the communications function of DOTC is now being effectively supervised by DOST since the Aquino watch started, Abola is really proposing DOTC’s abolition.

I share the view of Abola that “DOTC has been plagued, since the previous administration, by inefficiency and possibly corruption.”

I can sympathize too with Sec. Abaya when he complains that they are dealing with decades old problems that the public expect them to resolve quickly. We should not, however, allow Abaya to get away with his pity party. He has to admit there is a problem with the competence of DOTC’s staff, reason enough for Rene Santiago to ask for “regime change.”

Aside from technically clueless lawyers on top of DOTC, they also have the wrong attitude towards PPP projects. This was captured in an infamous quote from DOTC usec Timmy Limcaoco who exclaimed that they are just trying to prevent the private sector proponents from getting too rich.

Abola echoed the sentiment I earlier expressed in this column about “the inability of the DOTC to present commercially viable terms for public private partnership (PPP) projects to the private sector. The alternative, official development assistance (ODA) loans, supposedly with concessional terms end up more expensive.

“The DOTC has been making it difficult for the private sector to earn decent profits, as if the latter is bad, and that the government can do things and run them cheaper. No way. Failure of the PPP framework under the DOTC seems to be due to its populist tendencies,” he said.

DOTC executives are not the only ones guilty of this shortcoming. The DOF usec in charge of privatization, supposedly a former Goldman Sachs executive, is said to be even more anti private sector in his approach. DOF concurrence is required for PPP projects.

If nothing happens, we will be left behind by our neighbors in Southeast Asia. Rene Santiago, who is working on various transport projects in our neighboring countries told me that for one thing, Myanmar seems better at implementing infrastructure plans than the Philippines.

Rene also told a news conference last week that Myanmar was able to bid out three airport contracts in just nine months. P-Noy’s economic managers proudly set out about a dozen infrastructure projects under PPP scheme for infrastructure shortly after taking power. We all know that nothing much happened since.

Rene is passionate about the rail projects. In a forum with the Philippine Constructors Association where he was the speaker and I was a reactor, he said the rail projects could have eased mega Manila’s traffic problems. He estimated that the lost opportunity due to traffic congestion amounts to over P5 billion a day.

Lito Madrasto, one of the elder statesmen in the Philippine Constructors Association posted this comment on my Facebook wall: “three years and three months with nary any production from the DOTC cannot be considered slow, but rather INDECISIVE due to INEPTNESS.

“The PPP has been in the system for many decades already, first with the Private Financing Act that paved the way for the 1st Toll Road, the North Diversion Road, that eventually became the first stage of NLEX and further enhanced by the BOT Law in the late ’80s.

“For the DOTC leaders to act as if it is something new and perplexing indicates the capacity of their knowledge about the complexities of the job they are currently in. In the private sector, a new hire is let go if after the six-month probationary period he/she still cannot understand the job that the position entails.

“PNoy should stop the excuses and simply let them go and put in place the people who can execute the plans and the programs! Liberal Party mates or not! The money being used to pay for their inadequate and non-performing positions is not from the Liberal Party but from all taxpayers!”

It is clear that Sec. Abaya’s bellyaching last week is nothing more than excuses, excuses, shameless excuses. I am not sure if regime change at DOTC will deliver the goods before P-Noy leaves office. Maybe we should just get the lawyers out. But then again, we may be desperate enough to believe we have nothing more to lose... a total regime change is worth a try.

Napulis

Here’s something from the Professional Heckler.

A recent survey revealed six in 10 lawmakers have met and partied with Janet Lim-Napoles. The rest are liars who are going to rot in hell anyway.

 Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco