Finance chief offers special briefing for Imee Marcos

MANILA, Philippines — To address some “valid points” raised by Sen. Imee Marcos during last week’s Senate committee of the whole hearing, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III, the head of President Rodrigo Duterte’s economic team, on Wednesday offered to hold a special briefing just for her.

“As Chair of the Economic Development Cluster (EDC) of the Duterte administration, I acknowledge the questions and concerns you raised regarding the Philippine economy during the Senate committee of the whole hearing on the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic last May 20, 2020,” Dominguez said in a letter sent to Marcos, who chairs the Senate committee on economic affairs, last Tuesday.

“To clarify concerns you and the Senate committee on economic affairs may have on the national economy, particularly on the national accounts, I would like to offer a special briefing to be conducted by a senior official from the EDC at your earliest convenience,” Dominguez added.

“Rest assured that the EDC is studying the points you raised during the Committee hearing,” Dominguez told Marcos.

The Inquirer asked Dominguez if he thought Marcos raise valid points during the hearing.

Dominguez replied: “Valid points emerged, which could be addressed by an in-depth briefing.”

‘Masagana 99’

During last week’s hearing, Marcos touted the “success” of the “Masagana 99” rice program of her father, dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Dominguez responded pointedly: “I was the Secretary of Agriculture that cleaned up the mess that was left by ‘Masagana 99.’”

Dominguez served as agriculture secretary and also as natural resources minister under President Corazon Aquino, who took power after the dictator was ousted in 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution.

He said there were about 800 rural banks that were “bankrupted by that program, and we had to rescue them.”

“So whether it is a total success or not, tends to be measured against that,” he said.

The dictator’s daughter, however, was not finished with the rice issue.

She told Dominguez that his father’s two-decade rule was marked by “success” in rice exportation.

‘Wasteful, prone to graft’

Dominguez retorted: “We never exported rice, Ma’am.”

But in his Inquirer column on Wednesday, historian Ambeth Ocampo cited a 2016 article by Emil Q. Javier, an agronomist and a former president of the University of the Philippines, who said the rice program significantly increased palay yield and produced a surplus that was exported in 1977.

Javier, however, advised against repeating the program, Ocampo said.

He quoted Javier saying: “Sadly, Masagana 99 proved to be short-lived and unsustainable mainly due to the costly subsidies and failure of many farmers-borrowers to repay the loans … Giving away seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and dryers, while politically attractive, is temporary, wasteful and prone to graft. We have been doing that all these years with little to show for the expense and the effort.”