CEBU CITY – Senator Imee Marcos has revived her call to abolish the Procurement Service – Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM) and the Philippine International Trading Corporation (PITC) via Senate bills 1122 and 1123 which she first asserted during the 18th Congress.
“The series of procurement controversies that surfaced during the pandemic must end. In fact, COA (Commission on Audit) has reported that they go back more than a decade. We can step up emergency response with more direct purchases of supplies, equipment, and services. The government will also be able to avoid redundant allocations and save billions in next year’s national budget,” Marcos said.
Marcos has revived her call Marcos said, both agencies were created by former President Ferdinand Marcos in the 70’s. But they have not only outlived their usefulness, they have in fact become agencies of malfeasance and corruption.
Marcos emphasized that the procurement services of national government agencies should instead be strengthened, in accordance with Republic Act 9184, or the Government Procurement Reform Act (GPRA).
Marcos also questioned the PS-DBM’s practice of reselling equipment and supplies to national government agencies that funded their procurement. The PITC has become “a repository for unobligated funds of national government agencies” that were avoiding the return of unused portions of their budget to the national treasury and using them to fund yearend bonuses, she added.
The COA has flagged the PITC for about Php34 billion in idle funds from various national agencies, including those for procuring firetrucks and military supplies that had not been delivered for as long as six to eight years, even as the GPRA recommends that procurements be completed in 136 days at most, Marcos bared.
“The original purpose of the PITC was to
facilitate trade between socialist and other Centrally Planned Economy
Countries, like the U.S.S.R. and China at the time, but only Cuba and North
Korea remain as CPECs,” Marcos explained. (Photos: Google Images)
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