A Palace ally on Thursday lauded Malacañang for stepping up its drive to stamp out official corruption and save on multibillion-peso subsidies squandered on nonperforming assets with its abolition of deadwood state firms like the Partido Development Administration.
Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte praised President Duterte for displaying anew the strong political will in getting rid of the PDA, in the same way, that he had fired an increasing number of top government executives who have been implicated in anomalies in their respective agencies or state-run corporations.
“Malacañang should go ahead in abolishing or merging other non-performing assets in the government so that the billions of pesos in public funds that go to these government-owned and -controlled corporations [GOCCs] every year could be better spent on priority programs like President Duterte’s ‘Build, Build, Build’ initiative,” Villafuerte, vice chairman of the House committee on local government, and appropriations, said.
The abolition of PDA, as spelled out in Memorandum Order (MO) 29 signed by Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea, came after the Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Camarines Sur urged President Duterte and the Government Commission for GOCCs (GCG) to get rid of the PDA because of its failure to act on its mandate.
Villafuerte called on the Privatization Management Office (PMO) to speed up the disposition of PDA’s assets so the government could settle its liabilities at the soonest.