The National Printing Office, or NPO, which is under the Office of the Press Secretary, must be awash in cash.

In just the past quarter, NPO farmed out some P400 million worth of contracts to private companies. But those are contracts of other government offices, such as the Land Transportation Office, Department of Finance and local government units.

The NPO is the official printer of highly sensitive government forms, such as receipts and vehicle registration certificates.

By itself, the NPO has no means to service all government offices. And so it supposedly conducts public bidding for private printing firms to take on jobs.

As a rule, however, the NPO gets 15 percent of the contract price ? officially.

Unofficially, according to talk in the printing business, the private companies must shell out at least another 15 percent for whatever it is you sell out to get such fat contracts.

That?s a cool P60 million in only three months!

I heard that some officials in Malacañang are taking notice of the wonderful ?business? in the NPO.

Somebody in the Office of the Executive Secretary issued an opinion, saying that NPO has no business in bidding out those printing jobs of other government agencies.

In fact, based on executive orders, the NPO must compete with private firms for those contracts.

But nobody can as yet say whether or not those private firms are aware of the legal limits in what NPO can actually do.

Let?s just say that they must be happy doing ?business? ? and more ? with the office.

* * *

Just when elections are around the corner, former senator Ernesto Herrera comes out with a bright idea.

It actually concerns the holdings of state-run pension fund Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) in the headline-grabbing power distributor Manila Electric Co., or Meralco.

Press releases purportedly from the former senator said the GSIS could have made a cool P14 billion if it did not sell its 27-percent stake in Meralco.

To Herrera, apparently, if only GSIS waited a couple of months, it could have sold its Meralco shares at P129 per share in the stock market.

What a brilliant observation indeed!

Well, it turns out that the P129 per share price, the one referred to in the Herrera releases, was the peak of the Meralco shares in the stock market in March 2009.

And that was the time when the market was agog with talk of a boardroom battle in Meralco, featuring San Miguel and the Lopez group.

Meralco shares were at P44 apiece late last year. GSIS sold its Meralco holdings at P90 a share ? a premium of more than double!

And to what company again, pray tell, did GSIS sell the shares? None other than San Miguel Corp., whose entry into Meralco, of course, thanks to the sale of Meralco shares by GSIS, fueled speculation in the stock market. This, in turn, caused the price of shares to shoot up to another planet.

In other words, the GSIS sale of its shares was the first step in the rise of Meralco share prices to unknown heights!

Following Herrera?s bright idea, GSIS should just have held on to the shares and waited for the price bonanza that could not have possibly happened precisely if GSIS were stupid enough to have held onto the shares. Real bright!

* * *

Now, in business, they actually expect politicians to say a lot of things during election season. Really, politicos need to be noticed to attract those millions in campaign contributions.

But the question is, can they be expected to do background checks on every person, every group and every company that donate to them?

That, apparently, was the sin of Parañaque City Representative Eduardo Zialcita, who reportedly received some, ahh, ?benefits? from the Legacy pyramiding racket.

Zialcita came out recently to deny the accusation. He said the money from Legacy went to the citizens of Parañaque, as donation for things like free burial, medicines and such things that the public asks of officials.

But his critics, who may or may not be into this blighting mood because somebody wants Zialcita?s position in Congress next year, want him to scrutinize every centavo that has been donated.

That is well and good! I am just not sure if even the priest-turned-politician Governor Eddie Panlilio of Pampanga province can claim certainty on the ?source? of every centavo contributed to his campaign.

To start with, the alleged irregularities in the Legacy pyramiding racket even escaped the tight monitoring of the central bank, the Insurance Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission.

Okay, the moralists may argue that Zialcita should be expected to detect something wrong with the source of donation, even when authorities concerned with Legacy were in the dark at that time.

To do it, nevertheless, he must spend a lot of money on intelligence work, which he could use instead for free burials, medicines and hospital expenses of his constituents.

Now, reports insinuated that Zialcita must be in the protection racket to cover for Legacy, because he is the cousin of SEC Commissioner Jesus Martinez.

That, to me, is a guilty judgment by blood relation.

Just sue the guy, forgodsakes! You can even pay witnesses to testify against him.