6 GOCCs abolished, 25 more to follow

INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — Six government-owned and -controlled corporations (GOCCs) have been abolished, while 25 others are set to suffer the same fate.

Governance Commission for GOCCs (GCG) Director Johann Carlos Barcena shared this information during Friday’s Senate finance subcommittee hearing. The affected GOCCs, however, were not identifed.

“So, out of the 31 GOCCs, Mr. Chair, six have been completely abolished and liquidated, and the 25 remaining GOCCs, Mr. Chair, [are] in various stages of liquidation,” Barcena told Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, who presided over the hearing.

“Liquidation entails necessarily the disposition through auctions of the assets of the GOCC to pay off its outstanding liabilities before they can be considered fully liquidated and closed,” he explained.

Gatchalian pointed out that some GOCCs have been up for abolition for years, the longest since 2013.

“So, for almost ten years, it’s still under liquidation, and that’s what I can see a room for improvement: to, in fact, hasten the abolition of those approved GOCCs to be abolished,” he said.

GCG chairperson and retired justice Alex Quiroz pledged to “introduce some dynamics to hasten up” the process.

Quiroz attributed the abolition delay to the compensation and welfare of employees.

“We tried to adopt some schemes. Just like we have a dialogue, we have a meeting with them [employees], and addressing what measure or method to be adopted, in order to answer their concern,” he said.

“All of them have been satisfied to our action taken for their concern,” he continued.

GCG Commissioner Gideon Mortel likewise added that the delay in the liquidation of GOCCs is because they only had one ad hoc committee addressing the matter.

“That is given to the short of manpower, short of budget. So, the manpower complement of GCG is really having hard time to attend to that,” said Mortel.

Whatever the case, he sees no reason to worry about the deferment issue now that they have established the Disposition and Asset Management Office, a permanent department tasked with handling abolition-related issues.— Kristelle Razon, INQUIRER.net trainee

/MUF/abc