Press Release
February 7, 2011

ANGARA BATS FOR CLASSIFICATION OF GOCCs

Senator Edgardo J. Angara underscored the need to include a provision in the proposed GOCC Governance Act of 2011 that will classify Government-Owned and Controlled Corporations (GOCCs) according to its mandates and functions.

Angara said each class will attract special class of management and care of the asset as well as different compensations and other measures. Their functions, according to him, may be classified into the following categories: sovereign, propriety and hybrid.

"There are corporations exercising sovereign or regulatory function or those that exercise part of the function of the government. There are some GOCCs which were created for developmental purposes only and not really expected to generate profit nor to remit dividends. As such, different corporations entail different set of rules and treatment that's why it is important to classify GOCCs according to functions so we will know what to expect from them."

Angara co-sponsored with Senator Franklin Drilon Senate Bill 2640, which revealed that the total corporate asset of the government amounts to P5.557 trillion while the government's equity investment in the corporate sector ranges from US$41 billion to US$45 billion.

"We have contributed that much to the coffers of our corporate sector. With that kind of investment in other countries and with that size of asset under control by the government, the return would have been by the billions every year. In our case, the corporate sectors remit only less than 1 per cent of the total asset," Angara stressed.

He described the said measure as a worthwhile effort at rediscovering our "lost treasure" because the corporate sector has been given little notice. "It goes unnoticed in the national budget debate because they do not show us their operating budget every year, and no one really is minding this store specifically."

Angara also urged the administration to look into the wastage and giveaway attitudes of Filipinos towards our natural resources - land, forest, marine resources and our mines - because, he said, we are giving these out so cheaply and inexpensively that practically the whole country has been parceled out to people who do not even develop them.

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