MANILA — Philippine lawmakers have proposed
a $4.9 billion sovereign wealth fund to be chaired by President Ferdinand
Marcos Jr to boost growth, but critics warn it will be prone to graft and risk
Filipino pensions.
اضافة اعلان
Congressmen Sandro Marcos and Martin Romualdez — the
president’s son and cousin respectively — are among the six authors of the bill
filed to the House of Representatives and will be examined by several
committees before being debated in the house.
The “Maharlika Investments Fund” (MIF) would be
seeded with 275 billion pesos from government financial institutions, including
two pension funds and two banks, according to the latest version of the bill.
It would help the Marcos administration achieve its
goals of getting the Philippine economy to “soar to greater heights in spite of
external shocks”, the authors wrote.
The word “maharlika” is widely associated with
Marcos Jr’s late dictator father and namesake, who presided over widespread
human rights abuses and corruption during his two decades in power. He was
ousted in 1986.
Marcos Sr claimed to have led an anti-Japanese
guerrilla unit called Ang Mga Maharlika during World War II, but he has been
accused of lying about his war record.
The MIF has been met with concern from business
groups, economists, activists and opposition figures, who have questioned the
need for a sovereign wealth fund in the debt-laden country.
They argue pension funds were already being invested
and that diverting them to the MIF would expose them to additional risk.
Even the president’s own sister, Senator Imee
Marcos, said it was “risky to gamble” retirement funds.
“We all know about our neighbor Malaysia where their
1MDB was a real disaster where the money was looted,” she said, referring to
the graft scandal that involved billions of dollars of state funds.
A lack of safeguards also meant “the potential for
corruption is almost limitless”, Vincent Lazatin, former executive director of
the Transparency and Accountability Network, told AFP Tuesday.
‘A lot of questions’
The bill’s proponents
highlighted Indonesia as an example of a sovereign wealth fund successfully
being used to attract direct investments into infrastructure and emerging
industries.
But Natixis senior economist Trinh Nguyen said
Indonesia’s fund has a “very clear” investment objective, while the Philippine
proposal “lacks a direction”.
“There are a lot of questions. ... How is it going
to benefit the longer-term development objective of the Philippines because
it’s not very clear to me that it would,” she said.
Under the proposed bill, MIF funds would be “exempt
from any regulatory restrictions”.
Investment options would include financial
derivatives, equities, infrastructure projects, and “other investments as may
be approved by the Board”.
Congressman Joey Salceda, who leads the technical
working group examining the bill, told AFP the fund’s governing board would be
chaired by the president.
Former president Gloria Arroyo, who has backed the
bill, said it was a “powerful statement that the highest official of the land
will hold himself as ultimately accountable to the Filipino people for the performance
of the fund”.
But Lazatin noted that the country had a dismal
record of punishing elected officials for corruption.
“Our laws are good on paper, but in practice ... we
have not been able to hold public officials accountable,” he said.
An estimated $10 billion was stolen from state
coffers over the course of Marcos Sr’s rule, while the family has been accused
of owing more than $3.6 billion in estate taxes.
No one in the clan has been jailed.
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