In a column that I wrote last week (“What Retiring Presidents Should Stop Doing”, Nov. 17), I raised questions about the practice whereby Presidents of the Philippines, upon their return from foreign trip, issue statements indicating receipt of financial benefits – investments, loans and grants – from the countries visited by them? I said that the practice was unnecessary and demeaning.
Rodrigo Duterte is the latest Chief Executive to indulge in this Presidential malpractice. Upon his return from his visit to China he grandiosely announced that in the course of his stay in that country, the Philippines received $24 billion worth of investment offers to establish private-sector and government projects. In addition, he spoke of several billion dollars worth of loans for the financing of government and private-sector projects.
Before Duterte, there was Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and before Mrs. Arroyo there were Joseph Ejercito Estrada and Fidel Ramos. Like the incumbent Chief Executive, these former Presidents also felt a need to render a report to the Filipino people, upon their return from foreign trips, on the proverbial bacon that they had brought home.
As I pondered Mr. Duterte’s $24 billion newly-obtained –investments claim, it occurred to me that no determination, official or otherwise, of the eventual outcome of the financial benefits said to have been generated by the returning President’s foreign trips. No follow-through work has ever been done to determine how much, or what percentage, of a claim of a total of trip-generated foreign financial foods eventually translated into concrete results – public facilities installed, factories erected, products manufactured. Did all of the claimed trip-generated investments materialize? If not the entire amount, then what percentage of it? Did any of the claimed investment commitments fail to materialize completely, and what was the reason for its non-materialization?
Thus, the Filipino people don’t know if the trip-generated financial benefits claimed by former Presidents Aquino, Ramos, Estrada, Arroyo and Aquino were largely or partly hyperbolic or eventually translated 100 percent into actual structures, facilities and goods-producing entities. The arrival statements of the Chief Executives were delivered and that has been the end of it. There has never been any closing of the books on any claim of foreign-trip-generated investment commitment.
There should be a closing of the books on any such claim. A closing would be useful for two reasons. One reason is that there is a need to establish the batting average for the foreign-benefits package touted by each President returning from a trip. The other reason is the need to establish a pattern of actualization and non-actualization with regard to the investments or loan commitments made to Philippine Presidents in the course of their state visits or working visits to other countries: There is a need to know why some commitments become realities and why some don’t.
This is a research project worthy of a serious student of economic development. It is not a particularly difficult research project. All that the researcher has to do it to retrieve from the official records or newspaper libraries the arrival statements of returning Presidents, list down the investment commitments indicated in the statements and determine if concrete things resulted from the commitments. For the reasons stated above, the findings of such a research project will be of great value to economists and laymen alike.
Certainly, returning Presidents will, in the future, be less inclined to indulge in hype and braggadocio if they know that the contents of their arrival statements will be tracked and verified.
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