Public coffers as milking cow

Another graft case has recently been unraveled in public: Over half of the P70 daily food budget for each inmate at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) is lost to corruption.

This was exposed by Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla who told a Senate hearing on the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) budget last Wednesday that it is already considered lucky if P45 of the P70 daily allotment goes into the food served to persons deprived of liberty (PDLs). This means that P25 for each PDL’s food budget goes into the pockets of contractors or almost P800,000 a day based on a 2023 report that there were 30,701 inmates at the NBP. That amounts to at least P23 million a month of taxpayer money lost to corruption—and this is for one small government unit alone.

According to Remulla, the bidding process is replete with opportunities for corruption that was difficult to control. He recounted that an individual who was interested in handling the catering of the country’s penitentiary system was among the first who wanted to speak to him as soon as he assumed his post at the DOJ but that he refrained from interfering (“Ayoko hong pakialaman”).

Profitable venture

“Ang tingin ng mga tao sapagkat malaki ang budget, malaki ang kikitain. Hindi nila iniisip ang repercussions … Ito ay kultura na … palabigasan po ‘yan ng maraming taong nais kumita (People think that because there is a huge budget, there is a huge kickback. They don’t consider the repercussions … This is the culture that it has become a profitable venture for those who want to earn from it),” Remulla added. The total allocation for PDLs’ food this year is P1.5 billion, indeed a lucrative budget item for unscrupulous individuals looking into exploiting the system.

When asked by Sen. Grace Poe, chair of the committee on finance, on whether he had a solution to offer, Remulla replied: “Kultura na po ito na nandiyan na sa napakahabang panahon (This culture has been in existence for a very long time).”It is disappointing that even the justice secretary concedes to being helpless against corruption in his own turf. But it speaks to how well-entrenched corruption has been in the Philippines. In fact, it has been cited as one of the biggest obstacles to doing business in the country. The Philippines ranked 115 out of 180 countries in the 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index, scoring 34 out of 100. This was hardly a substantial improvement from its 33 score in 2022 with Transparency International noting that the country remained at the lower end of the spectrum among Southeast Asian countries that continued to “struggle to deliver on anti-corruption efforts.”

Structural obstacles

The problem was highlighted by the United States Department of State in its 2024 investment climate statement on the Philippines, noting that corruption is so pervasive in both public and private sectors. Acts of corruption pervade the system from small-time graft committed by lowly clerks to bypass bureaucratic systems to those with national and international repercussions involving high officials implicated in illegal Philippine offshore gaming operators.

“[A]ll levels of corruption, from petty bribery to grand corruption, patronage, and state capture, exist in the Philippines at a considerable scale and scope,” said the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre (U4). The Norway-based institute acknowledged that “significant efforts” have been made to combat corruption including putting in place legal and institutional frameworks. But, as U4 noted, the success of anti-corruption initiatives continues to be undermined by structural obstacles. The US state department also pointed to the “complex, slow, redundant, and sometimes corrupt judicial system” as one of the factors that turn off would-be investors.

Milking cow

This is best illustrated by the criminal charge that the Ombudsman filed this week against former health secretary Francisco Duque III and former Procurement Service-Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM) undersecretary Lloyd Christopher Lao before the Sandiganbayan. The case, which stemmed from the controversial transfer of P41.464 billion worth of the Department of Health’s funds to the PS-DBM from March to December 2020 to procure supplies for the COVID-19 pandemic, took years before formal charges could be filed.

How about the terminated contract with the supplier of national IDs that continues to be hounded by delays, as well as the many other graft cases within the bureaucracy? Will it take years before the government makes the people behind them accountable? As for the P73 million worth of confidential funds used by the office of Vice President Sara Duterte that was disallowed by the Commission on Audit, will the government be able to recover the money and exact accountability?

These exposes will be meaningless unless corrupt individuals are prosecuted and penalized for treating the national coffers as their milking cow. Until that happens, this culture of corruption will tragically continue at the expense of the Filipino taxpayer.