EDITORIAL - Clueless

Goodness, those officials of multilateral financing institutions must all look alike, and the Philippines’ secretary of finance must be suffering from a severe case of jet lag in Washington. Two Cabinet secretaries pointed to Finance Secretary Margarito Teves, who is in the US capital, as the source of the information that the World Bank had committed $10 billion as a standby fund for ailing banks in Southeast Asia. President Arroyo announced the supposed World Bank commitment on Wednesday, only to be denied the next day by both the WB’s country director for the Philippines, Bert Hofman, and the vice president for East Asia, Jim Adams.

What other economic facts are being wrongly reported by the government? Amid the World Bank’s denial, other members of the Presi-dent’s economic team scrambled to contain the damage, saying Teves was the source of the erroneous information but emphasizing that no one was to blame. They certainly could not blame their boss, who obviously thought the supposed World Bank commitment was a piece of good news that had to be made known to the nation immediately.

It is not the first time that the President has made an erroneous or premature announcement in her hurry to disclose what she thinks is positive news. In one unforgettable case, she erroneously tagged Acsa Ramirez, the whistle-blower in a scam at the Land Bank of the Philippines, as one of the suspects. Ramirez never received a presidential apology.

This time the President’s economic managers, at pains to find a way of reducing her embarrassment over the World Bank story, are hopping mad – not at Teves or their boss – but at the WB officials. The prudent reaction is simply to acknowledge the mistake and quickly move on to the complicated task of shielding the economy from the impact of the global financial meltdown. This takes more than ensuring that Philippine banks have access to any standby facility provided by multilateral institutions.

And as the administration tries to do its homework, it should keep in mind that the provision of any such funding facility must be announced by the one providing it, not by the beneficiary.