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By Rene Q. Bas
First of a series
Unless things miscarry, Dr. Ramon Clarete,
Accelerated Growth Investment and Liberalization with Equity (AGILE)
chief of party, and his senior associates, Dr. David Tardif-Douglin,
Matthew X. Buzby, and others will appear today at the Senate’s
committee of the whole.
They are actually not AGILE employees.
They are the core project managers recruited by a US company that
serves USAID as an “institutional contractor,” Development
Alternatives Inc.
For AGILE is not an agency, a company, a lobby
group, or a nest of spies. It is the name of a project, a set of
activities, financed mainly by the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) and supported in kind by
Philippine government and private sector institutions cooperating
with the Philippine government to achieve specific economic reform
and improvement objectives.
Dr. Clarete (who is an eminent UP economics
professor) and his colleagues working on the Agile project are some
of this country’s — and the world’s — topmost experts in
their respective fields of economic development science.
Also invited to today’s Senate hearing are Yen
Makabenta and J. P. Fenix, both of PRISM, a Philippine public
affairs company, which is a subcontractor of DAI in the aviation
reform aspect of the Agile project. Other Agile/DAI associated
people subpoenaed to the hearing are Francesca Baniqued, who is the
Agile banking expert and works with Bangko Sentral officials, and
Rowena Arceo, another expert hired by DAI (she works on Securities
and Exchange Commission reforms).
Some senators want to meet and hear them testify
and be enlightened. Others, those who have been referring to
Agile as a sinister group of spies “imbedded in the government”
and lobbyists “imposing American interests” on Filipino
lawmakers, will seek to grill them and make them give answers that
can be distorted by the media to embarrass both the American and
Philippine governments.
Also ready to appear at the Senate today are the
country’s chief economic managers — Finance Secretary Jose
Isidro Camacho, Budget Secretary Emilia Boncodin, National Economic
Development Authority Secretary Romulo Neri. So are former
secretaries Jose Pardo and Roberto de Ocampo; former Neda
Director-Generals Felipe Medalla and Cielito Habito; Finance
Undersecretary and chairperson of the Agile steering committee
Juanita Amatong; Assistant Finance Secretary and alternate
chairperson of the Agile steering committee Roberto Tan; member of
the Agile steering committee and Neda Assistant Director-General
Margarita Songco. They will surely speak well of Agile.
From the private sector, aside from Makabenta
and Fenix, are Dr. Emil Antonio, Assistant Dean School of Economics,
University of Asia and the Pacific, who is the representative for
the academe to the Agile steering committee; and Peter Wallace,
president of the Wallace Business Forum.
We are publishing this special report, precisely
in anticipation of the difficulties that the senators — and the
public — will still have, even after today’s Senate hearing,
comprehending what Agile is all about. Many of the words, columns
and “analysis” published and broadcast in Philippine media these
past two weeks about Agile have been largely un- or misinformed, the
accurate statements about it truncated.
We interviewed those who have been managing
AGILE and officials and workers in those branches of the US and
Philippine governments that created and now use AGILE. The
“institutional contractor” hired by USAID to serve as its
“implementing arm” for the AGILE project is the American
consultancy firm, Development Alternatives, Inc. Its acronym, for a
group dedicated to giving life to Philippine dreams of viable
economic growth and development, ironically sounds like a curse.
Some of DAI’s sub-contracted consultants also gave us valuable
information, not all necessarily in praise of it.
History and mission
The real beginning of Agile is in the fact that
it is Philippine national policy to maintain closeness to the United
States as a friend, ally and source of loans and economic (not to
mention military) aid.
Philippine acceptance of American economic aid
began during the Commonwealth period and continued without a break
when the “Philippine Islands” became the “Republic of the
Philippines” on July 4, 1946. US aid in the post WW II years was
mainly for the country’s reconstruction and the restoration
of WW II ravaged institutions, the basic health services and the
educational system.
Postwar US economic aid focused on rebuilding
the Philippines’ mainly agricultural and primary-product economy.
Even then, nationalists and Leftists were characterizing US economic
aid programs and projects as subversions of Philippine independence.
But it has never ceased to be Philippine national policy —
contained and restated time and again in laws and resolutions passed
by Congress, presidential executive orders, Cabinet declarations and
departmental orders – to treat the United States of America as a
source of economic aid.
Always, American economic aid comes to the
Philippines in relation to objectives set by Filipino national
economic and financial planners, as spelled out in every
administration’s “Medium Term Economic Plan.” (These
economic managers, without exception, have been invariably attacked
by communists and some types of nationalists for allegedly
being promoters of American imperialist and neo-colonial interests.)
The Agile project enters the Philippine
scene in that context.
First, let’s be clear about what Agile really
is.
“Accelerated Growth Investment Liberalization
with Equity” is the umbrella name for a “project” whose joint
organizers are the American and Philippine governments. In the
earliest preparatory stages (in 1995 to the end of 1997), Agile was
referred to not as a “project” but only as an “activity.”
As is normal with American international aid to
developing countries, the US government body involved is the Agency
for International Development (USAID). The Philippine government
agencies that, in partnership with USAID, created the Agile project
are the Department of Finance and the National Economic and
Development Authority .
Agile became a formal reality during the Ramos
presidency. Then Finance Secretary Roberto F. de Ocampo was
the chairman of the USAID Coordinating Council for the Philippine
Assistance Program (CCPAP). Governments of every USAID beneficiary
country forms a body like CCPAP. It works to ensure both continuity
of liaison and proper management of aid requested for — and
received — from America.
On Nov. 21, 1997, Ocampo signed “Joint
Project Implementation Letter No. 55 (JPIL No. 55)” and thereby
affirmed the RP government’s concurrence with the US government
(represented by then USAID Director Kenneth G. Schofieled) that
“Philippine Assistance Program Support (PAPS) Project No.
492-0452” is to be implemented by both countries.
The total cost estimate for Agile’s
“activity program” was set at $28.4 million. USAID would supply
about $21 million. The balance of $7.4 million or 25 percent of
total activity costs plus VAT expenditures, would be provided in
cash and in kind by the Department of Finance, Neda and the other
government agencies, as well as private sector organizations,
receiving Agile assistance for their specific subactivities. It
appears that government expenses for Agile have been practically
zero and largely in kind. This including the salaries of government
people detailed to Agile project implementation. It is the
private sector organizations that are USAID-DoF-NEDA partners in
Agile that have contributed real money in pesos to fund part of
their own Agile activities. Examples are the Filipino
exporters federation and the Freedom to Fly Coalition.
PAPS Project No. 4092-0452 established Agile
“as an authorized activity of the Economic Development Component
of PAPS.” The RP and US signatories of JPIL No. 55 declared
that the Agile project “is consistent with USAID/Philippines’
Strategic Objective No. 2 (SO2).” This strategic objective
seeks to achieve “Improved National Systems for Trade and
Investment” in this country.
JPIL No. 55 spells out specific results aimed
for by the Agile project and the various activities placed under it.
If these targeted specific results were all realized, the
Philippines would cease to be poor.
Prior to JPIL No. 55, USAID had been giving the
Philippines assistance in various areas of economic growth and
development. But the Ramos regime’s Philippine economic
planners realized that the activities of the RP and USAID to pursue
SO2 (to improve “national systems for trade and investment”)
were not quite right.
They “tended to stress liberalization.”
They did not give ample attention to growth and investment. Worse,
they lacked that element moralists, social-justice activists and
churchmen demand to be treated as the twin brother of liberalization
— equity.
And these activities were not pushing
“competition” in the economy hard enough to build up the
country’s “competitive advantage” in the global market.
Competition, the economic managers who co-authored the Agile project
planning believe, is the key to strengthening the economy. It will
spur more and faster growth, attract bigger investments, create more
jobs – therefore alleviate poverty and create an atmosphere of
equity all around.
JPIL No. 55 explains that the past’s stress on
liberalization (and absence of stress on other goals) was
“partially because liberalization was the most immediate need and
partially because competition tends to be a more difficult objective
to pursue.” 
Part
2 | Conclusion
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