Imee refiles bill abolishing PS-DBM, PITC
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.
Marcos said that emergency response would be faster and more effective with more direct purchases of supplies, equipment, and services, especially with the declaration by the President of an extended state of a public health emergency.
“The government will also be able to avoid redundant allocations and save billions in next year’s national budget,” the senator added.
The lady senator is pressing for greater direct procurement by national government agencies ahead of an extended state of public health emergency and Congressional hearings on the 2023 national budget.
“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,” Marcos said.
She further said that the PS-DBM and PITC were both created during the term of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr. but have “outlived” their usefulness, adding that they have become agencies of “malfeasance” and corruption.
Marcos emphasized that national government agencies’ procurement services should be strengthened in accordance with Republic Act 9184 or the Government Procurement Reform Act (GPRA).
The PS-DBM has faced allegations of overpricing in the procurement of P42 billion worth of face masks, face shields, and personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Department of Health (DOH) last year and P2.4 billion worth of teachers’ laptops for the Department of Education (DepEd) just last week, she said.
Sen. Marcos also questioned the PS-DBM’s practice of “reselling” equipment and supplies to national government agencies that funded their procurement.
Meanwhile, 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 year-end bonuses.
The COA has flagged the PITC for about P34 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.”
“The original purpose of the PITC was to facilitate trade between socialist and other Centrally Planned Economy Countries [CPEC], like the USSR [Union of Soviet Socialist Republic] and China at the time, but only Cuba and North Korea remain as CPECs,” Marcos explained.
