PH marks in MCC scorecard slip

The Philippines got failing marks in the areas of control of corruption and rule of law in the Millennium Challenge Corp.’s latest country scorecards.

The government, however, expressed optimism that the US aid agency would still extend its planned second compact or grant to the country given the reforms implemented by the Duterte administration.

The MCC scorecard measures a country’s policy performance in the areas of economic freedom, ruling justly and investing in its people.

Based on the latest report, the Philippines passed in more than half or 12 of the 20 independent, third-party indicators in the fiscal year 2018 edition of the annual MCC scorecard.

The country obtained passing marks in fiscal policy, inflation, regulatory quality, trade policy, land rights and access, political rights, civil liberties, government effectiveness, freedom of information, natural resource protection, girls’ secondary education enrollment rate and child health.

However, it fell short in control of corruption, rule of law, gender in the economy, access to credit, business start-up, health expenditures, primary education expenditures, and immunization rates.

In contrast, the Philippines’ 2017 scorecard showed that the country garnered passing scores in 13 out of the 20 indicators, including control of corruption, rule of law and civil liberties.

The Washington-based MCC in December last year deferred making a decision on a new compact for the Philippines, which was supposed to be spent on programs and projects fostering economic growth and slashing poverty.

That time, the MCC said the Philippines was subject to further review on “concerns around rule of law and civil liberties.”

The deferment was made under the term of then US President Obama who was critical of President Duterte’s war against drugs.

In a statement yesterday, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III said “the Philippines remains firmly committed to the rule of law and strictly adheres to due process.”

“The President has also made clear that his platform of government will be based on zero tolerance for corruption in government,” Dominguez added.

“In its first year in office, the Duterte administration has actually been relentless in the campaign against corruption in the government,” he said, adding that the President “cleansed the corruption-plagued Bureau of Corrections in just weeks after assuming office by replacing its prison guards with elite personnel from the Special Action Force of the Philippine National Police.”

Last month, Dominguez said, the President issued an executive order creating the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate administrative cases of corruption involving presidential appointees.

“The Duterte administration also set up the 8888 citizens complaint hotline in October last year to receive complaints against corruption and inefficiencies in government, among other measures,” he noted.

Dominguez nonetheless said “there were inherent time lags in the third-party data used by the MCC in assessing the annual scorecard for the Philippines.”

He said the data on which the control of corruption indicator was based in September 2017 primarily covered the events in 2016.

The control of corruption and rule of law scores were based on an aggregation of quantitative assessments and perception surveys that were collected by the World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators in conjunction with the Brookings Institution based on information for the events in 2016, he added.

“We have been informed that we are at the median level in these two indicators, which we believe we can improve as we work together with the MCC to enlighten them about our effective efforts to weed out corruption in the Philippine bureaucracy,” Dominguez said.

“The scorecards are only one of the factors that the MCC board takes into consideration when making selection decisions. We are confident the board will take into consideration relevant information and recent data on our deliberate efforts to improve the control of corruption and adherence to the rule of law indicators,” the finance chief said.

In an Aug. 16 report, the MCC said the Philippines was among the candidate-countries for compact eligibility for 2018.