New source to bridge budget gap found? - DEMAND AND SUPPLY By Boo Chanco

It was really very simple and it took Education Usec Butch Valdez to use it as a fund raising scheme to buy himself and other top Education officials luxury vehicles. He asked the Land Bank to convert the DECS account from current to interest bearing and presto, there was P12 million available.

Why didn't other finance officers of various government departments think of that before? Why didn't budget genius Ben Diokno think of that before? Or maybe they all knew that gimmick and are using that all along for surreptitious funding of various schemes that will not get funded otherwise. Perhaps, the Senate committee looking into the DECS luxury cars scam should examine this angle more deeply.

In questioning Butch Valdez, Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile may have stumbled on an easy and painless (to taxpayers) way of bridging the budget gap. Given the size of the national budget and assuming even just a minimum three-percent interest can raise an awful lot of money that apparently up to now, fall through the cracks. Now we are into hard times, every centavo counts.

How come COA never thought of that before? This also brings up the matter of training our COA auditors to be more street savvy and not be so bureaucratic in their approach to their work. I think the Senate has opened a whole new can of worms.

The other implication of this revelation is that the Budget Department and the National Treasurer are releasing funds much too early. That is why Land Bank can even give interest to DECS that is as large as P12 million. If the funds are given just in time, government's borrowing costs can be brought down. They should devise a just-in-time system of disbursing funds. This just shows that the treasury function is so vital because it maximizes the efficiency in the use of taxpayer money.

When I was working with Petron, the standard joke there was we were not running an oil company but a bank. The margins in oil marketing are razor thin and often not there due to price control and delays in collecting from the OPSF. The guys who made the money were the low key guys in Treasury who knew how to make the most returns for the daily cash we take in and also take advantage of properly timing payments to creditors to earn us whatever profits we end up making. Given the amount of money handled by government, we must have topnotch treasury managers in place. Now, I wonder if we do.

Maybe, if we can make Butch Valdez take a values education course (apparently the one he took in La Salle isn't adequate), he may be just the one we need in the National Treasury. Maabilidad. We need guys like Butch, one who possesses a creative imagination and who is street savvy. If only he can be made to realize that true public service involves self-sacrifice, instead of scheming for self aggrandizement as he did in the luxury cars case, he'd be perfect. Being a naïve do gooder like Brother Andrew simply isn't enough, as we all saw.

Olympic bokya

I couldn't bear to check the final medal standings in the just concluded Sydney Olympics. All I know is that a day or two before the games ended, I caught a report on CNN that Ethiopia won a gold and a silver in one of the events. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Ethiopia… civil war stricken and famine plagued Ethiopia won a gold and a silver. Closer to home, Vietnam too won a silver. But good old Philippines expected to win nothing and fulfilled its expectation.

But there was Presidential first son, Jinggoy, complaining on television that we were cheated. I give him the benefit of the doubt. From the way he described it, we probably were cheated alright. Those biased judges and referees are probably part of a cabal of Olympic insiders who fixed the results.

Still, that was a disappointment to me. We had an oversized contingent of sports officials who are experienced in the art of intrigue and lutong makaw, based on the frequent squabbles in the sports federation. What were they doing? They should have been busy working in the backroom, if indeed, that's how Olympic medals are won. We are supposed to be the best in those dagdag bawas schemes. Maski pala sa katarantaduhan, hindi tayo world class? Aba, sobra na yan.

That really hurts. Natalo tayo sa intriga at lutong makaw? Napaka kawawa na talaga natin. Yun na lang ang trabaho ng mga damuhong sports officials na nag-junket sa Sydney, hindi pa nila ginampanan? Baka naman naubos ang oras nila sa King's Cross at pinabayaan ang mga atleta?

I know joining the Olympics is honor enough. But there is no honor for the country if after all these many years, we still haven't won a gold and in the last few Olympics, have actually won nothing. Why do we have to proclaim to the world every four years that we are nothing? What's the use?

Maybe we should stop participating in future Olympics until we figure out a way of winning a medal. Worse, we always come up with excuses for our failure. Even poverty stricken Ethiopia, whose government does not have enough funds to feed its people, much less the funds to train athletes, actually won four gold medals and some silver and bronze too. Why can't we?

The British Olympics contingent was welcomed warmly in London after the games and they attributed their success to training and the funding provided by the lotto. O, mayroon din naman tayong lotto. Mayroon pa tayong jueteng. Wala sila nun. Hindi tayo kulang sa pera kung yun lang ang problema. Maybe we should decide now to specialize in just a handful of events and use our lotto and jueteng to fund a good training program for our entries.

We aren't that hopeless as a people but we need to prove it to the world and most of all, to ourselves. Filipinos have what it takes to win in world class competitions. Look at the Filipino-Americans who excel in golf and tennis abroad and win tournaments there.

Of course, they don't live in this country and have nothing to do with this government and our sports leaders. They train on their own. And they are world class. But when we imported this Fil-am Dave Bune something, supposedly world class and our best hope for a track and field medal some years back, palpak naman pala. Pang pretty boy showbiz lang. Maybe it isn't this Dave fellow's fault. Maybe it's our system, the air we breathe, or something rotten back here. Sa bagay, hindi naman tayo natatalo. Nadadaya lang, di ba Jinggoy?.

Different wave lengths

Dr. Ernie sent us this joke about two lovers, who metaphorically, could well be Brother Andrew and his assistant, Usec Butch.

Newlyweds Ole and Lena were on their honeymoon trip from their little town in northern California. They are nearing San Francisco when Ole puts his hand on Lena’s knee. Giggling, Lena says, "Ole, you can go farther than that if you want to."

So Ole drives to Los Angeles.

(Boo Chanco's e-mail address is [email protected])