Government to abolish more GOCCs by 2017

MANILA, Philippines - The government plans to trim the number of its corporations to between 88 and 90 by 2017 as it promises to abolish those which are no longer operating in line with their social development goals.

“We try to make sure that the GOCCs sector become lean and mean, and composed of GOCCs that are robust,” said Cesar Villanueva, chairman of the Governance Commission on Government-Owned and –Controlled Corporations (GOCCs).

“Our aim is by the year 2017, we have about a working group of 88 to 90 GOCCs and each of them has an operation that is meaningful towards achieving social development rather than competing with the private sector,” he told The STAR.

The GCG, created in 2011 to monitor and create policies for GOCCs, has already abolished more than 20 state-owned firms and privatized one. 

At present, Villanueva said there are 14 more that were recommended to President Aquino for abolition, and another two which were already approved to be scrapped in principle.

He declined to name the GOCCs up for dissolution.

Under Republic Act No. 10149, the GCG is mandated to evaluate state corporations and determine if they would need to be reorganized, merged, streamlined, abolished, or privatized.

Villanueva recounted that under the law, GOCCs may be abolished if their functions are no longer relevant to the state or if these overlap with other programs already provided for by another agency.

GOCCs may also be dissolved if they do not achieve the purposes they were originally created, are not cost-efficient, are dormant and non-operational, or have activities deemed to be best carried out by the private sector.

Finally, the law also states abolition may be recommended for purposes of consolidation of GOCCs into a holding company.

“In any event, the manner by which we have begun to do this—how to classify, how to abolish, how to merge—because of the practice we undertook, we put them all in a memorandum circular… so that it becomes institutional,” Villanueva stressed.