Strangled by red tape

Goods meant for the Christmas season are stuck in the Port of Manila. Several importers told me they no longer bothered ordering additional Christmas-themed shipments because these would be cleared at the port only in time for Valentine’s Day 2015, and that’s an optimistic projection.

Even under daang matuwid, there’s no stopping corruption at the ports. Cabinet Secretary Jose Rene Almendras, who was tasked to head a special cluster to study port congestion, said as much. The Cabinet cluster found extortion inside and outside the Port of Manila, and on the road; there was so much extortion he could write a handbook about it, Almendras told a press briefing.

Extortion thrives when the system is designed to make people believe grease money is the only way to get government services moving. From barangay offices up to executive departments, there are layers and layers of red tape, with each layer an opportunity for the office or person in charge to collect a “facilitation fee.”

An ambassador told me recently that while investors from his country were interested in the Philippines, those who have actually waded in were dismayed that it was taking them a year just to get their business going.

Merely opening a 40-square-meter store will require a mountain of signatures and reams of documents including copies of signed construction blueprints (even if only for the interiors), which cost up to P5,000 each. Closing a business is nearly as complicated.

The unusually abominable woes at the Port of Manila started over a year ago, when a sweeping reorganization at the Bureau of Customs (BOC) paralyzed cargo processing. The resulting cargo pileup has only become worse.

As the 2013 ’ber months rolled around, heralding the start of the Christmas season in this country, businessmen were already groaning from the costly delays in cargo processing, which required more storage fees and grease money. I wrote about a minor importer who was forced to fork out more than P40,000 for the release of a small shipment or the Christmas items wouldn’t make it for the holidays. The importer, a religious person who initially believed in daang matuwid, sighed to me: “It’s so hard to do business honestly in this country!”

The Customs commissioner at the time, Ruffy Biazon, himself openly lamented that too many crooks and powerful influence peddlers made his work difficult.

People thought Biazon was simply looking for excuses for his own incompetence and that a top-to-bottom revamp in the BOC would be the solution.

As we have seen in the past months, and as validated by Almendras, this has not been the case.

*   *   *

Crooks find ways of circumventing even well meaning efforts to promote transparency. I’ve heard complaints from several quarters that new regulations to make fund utilization transparent were causing interminable delays in project implementation. One exasperated individual lamented that daang matuwid is becoming a straight path to hell.

Perhaps the regulations just need fine-tuning. As one affected official complained, the cure must not prove worse than the disease.

In the Port of Manila, red tape has always been a boon for “facilitators” or, as they are known in other government agencies, fixers.

Every Filipino who has ever dealt with a government office has surely encountered fixers. But the port congestion, with its impact on business and consumer prices, has placed the corruption spotlight on the Port of Manila.

Officials studying the problem have said crooks are collecting from P500 to P2,500 for the release of every shipping container.

I’ve been told that free trade could discourage corruption. Zero or near-zero tariffs mean the BOC will no longer be focused on revenue collection but on tasks such as preventing the entry of prohibited drugs, weapons, and substances or goods that pose a threat to public health, crops and the environment.

Maybe this is why free trade proposals get tepid reception from government officials in this country.

*   *   *

Corruption in the ports and continuing red tape throughout the bureaucracy are denting President Aquino’s commitment to daang matuwid.

If P-Noy wants to present the 2016 elections as a battle between good and evil, he should make sure the demarcation line is clearly drawn.

At the rate he’s expressing confidence in his officials who are under investigation for wrongdoing, he is fueling public perception that everyone in government is either a crook or eventually turns out to be a crook.

P-Noy’s reaction when his friends and allies are accused of impropriety, when compared with the treatment of opposition personalities, gives credence to criticism that his administration is engaged in selective prosecution. The investigation into the pork barrel scam is still targeting mainly the opposition and members of the Arroyo administration.

P-Noy’s commitment to the straight path has been shaken for some time now by scandals involving individuals known to be close to him. He let go, but with great reluctance, of his shooting buddies Rico Puno as undersecretary of the interior and local government and Virginia Torres as Land Transportation Office (LTO) chief.

So far P-Noy has ignored accusations against his favorite cop Alan Purisima and budget chief Florencio Abad. Yesterday the Metro Rail Transit broke down again. The disastrous MRT service has to be linked with the corruption scandal that has emerged over its maintenance, but P-Noy seems perfectly happy with Transport Secretary Jun Abaya and predecessor Mar Roxas.

If P-Noy doesn’t have the heart (or the nerve) to give his BFFs and Liberal Party stalwarts even a slap on the wrist, he should be busy laying the foundations for systemic reforms in both the national and local governments.

Other countries have succeeded in eliminating or greatly reducing red tape; there are several templates available for this.

Perhaps port and BOC officials can look at the LTO, which eliminated fixers and received ISO certification during the presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (daang matuwid must give credit where credit is due).

Once the public gets used to red tape-free ways of doing business, returning to the old ways can invite a revolution. Institutional transformation should prove resistant to leadership changes.