Press Release
January 27, 2009

ROXAS HITS EBDANE FOR INACTION ON WB REPORT

Liberal President Senator Mar Roxas today chided Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane of the Department of Public Works and Highways for not acting immediately to stop the illegal collusion among contractors in the bidding of government infrastructure projects.

"If I was secretary of DPWH, I will feel insulted. I will feel 'How can you say that?' How can you say that we are allowing this?' I would have conducted an investigation. I would have asked 'How can the World Bank say that there is collusion under my watch? Eh matino naman akong tao, malinis naman ang aking record? Pakita natin na we will not allow such collusion," he said during today's Senate hearing into the World Bank's ban against three Philippine contractors from participating in any WB-financed projects in the country.

Roxas was referring to Ebdane's failure to order an internal investigation into the WB finding of collusive practices among contractors participating in DPWH biddings for road projects.

Stressing that bidding for infrastructure projects fall within the auspices of the DPWH, he said Ebdane should have looked into the allegations from the international lending agency and punished officials and contractors involved in the anomaly.

"What (the World Bank executives) are in fact is saying is the bidding under the auspices of the DPWH is defective because that bidding did not produce the best price and the best quality for the Filipino people because this bidding allowed a collusive product or a collusive outcome to come about," he said, adding: "What is central to this is the bidding undertaken by the DPWH or the rules and regulations of the DPWH in fact allows this collusion to happen."

He asked Ebdane: "Were you not concerned how they could have found this? Did you ask for data? For an internal investigation? Did you ask them, who were your witnesses? What is your evidence? And so on and so forth? Was there such coordination?" to which the secretary replied: "I did not want to jump the gun on the World Bank investigation."

Ebdane said during the hearing that he knew of the WB investigation into the anomaly as early as November 2007, or even before the decision of the WB executives were released to the public.

The Ilonggo senator said it was important that the DPWH took the WB decision seriously.

"The (WB investigated the issue) for them in their effort to protect their money. They undertook this investigative process. The World Bank and their executives are responsible to the governments of the world who all contribute to the ownership of the World Bank, including the Philippine government. We have a contributory share in the ownership of the World Bank, all of the governments of the world are pretty much co-owners of the World Bank. So the World Bank, in arriving at these findings, simply is saying: In our investigation, these companies appear more likely than not to have engaged in collusion. So we no longer will want to deal with them. It's as simple as that," he said.

"If a respected entity says in their own investigation they have found collusive practice by these contractors, the relevant question for us as a government is: What did we do to follow-up on this? Okay lang ba sa atin na other agencies have found out about this collusive practice? Or are we ourselves interested to find out what happened? Was there anything in our laws or regulations that may have contributed to it? Or were there people that may have in fact aided and abetted it?" he also said.

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