National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) director general Dante Canlas said he doubts the basis of the PERC survey that gave a low rating to the Philippine bureaucracy.
"Unfortunately, I haven’t seen the report," he said. "I really have to take issue with that report if ever, simply because I think there have been several improvements in trying to improve the bureaucracy under this administration. Since the survey is limited to a sub-selected group, I think the executives’ operation in the region is quite understandable why they would react like that."
Canlas said red tape in the Philippine bureaucracy had been "addressed effectively" when President Arroyo took over the government from President Joseph Estrada on Jan. 20 last year.
"The administration has made very important progress in this regard," he said. "So on the whole, I believe much progress has been done in trying to improve the workings of the Philippine bureaucracy and we continue to work in that direction," he said.
Canlas said Mrs. Arroyo has cut down the number of signatures needed from various government agencies for clearances and permits to avail of housing loans.
"We have made significant achievements in trying to improve the way we run things in the government bureaucracy at this point," he said.
Canlas said Mrs. Arroyo and the Cabinet discussed yesterday the computerization of the National Census and Statistics Office (NCSO), which is the central depository of birth and marriage certificates, and other documents from local civil registries nationwide.
"(Last year,) it was reported to the President and the Cabinet by the NSO, that it processed three million applications for birth certificates," he said.
"The NSO has improved its processing of birth certificates from the 1990s processing of only 200,000; this increased to three million applications for birth certificates for travel and passport purposes."
Canlas said the NCSO plans to place in digital format some 55 million birth data to speed up services to thousands of daily applicants for birth certificates.
"And about 27 percent applications in February can now be processed on a while-you-wait basis," he said.
The waiting time for applicants of birth certificates has been reduced from two weeks to about eight days, he added.
In the survey, the Philippines and Indonesia were pictured as moving in the "opposite direction" because the pay for civil servants was very low.
Of the 12 countries rated on a scale of zero to 10 with 10 as lowest, the survey gave the Philippines a score of 8.18 before Indonesia, which got 9.33, and India as lowest with 9.50.
The PERC report said low pay "hurts morale and encourages corruption and inefficiency" among government employees.
"But improving bureaucracy did not mean cutting or raising the salaries of civil servants but lay in removing many functions from the public sector altogether," read an excerpt from the survey..
The report said the problem for Asian countries was to strike the right balance between the public and private sectors.
"If Asian governments cannot get their fiscal accounts into better order, the conflict between the public and private sectors is bound to grow," read an excerpt from the survey.
"And since public sector employees are in a stronger position to defend their share of the pie relative to the private sector, the extent that ‘bureaucracy’ is perceived to be a problem by those in the private sector is bound to grow." – Marichu Villanueva