THE SECURITIES and Exchange Commission (SEC) is seeking fiscal and administrative autonomy so it can address its supposed inadequacies and help prevent another pre-need industry crisis.
SEC Chairman Fe B. Barin told Palace reporters giving more powers to the corporate regulator would allow it to hire more people and allocate enough funds to make the agency more efficient.
"We will make that recommendation to Malacañang as soon as possible. If we can be given financial and administrative autonomy, we can have the right number of people with the right expertise, pay the right salaries... The efficiency of office will be improved," she claimed.
But Ms. Barin said she was not aiming for fiscal powers as broad as those of the central bank, adding that she only wanted more financial flexibility.
"But as it is, our budget gets smaller every year. Last year, we were down to P241 million. This year it’s around P240 million," she pointed out.
The Executive, for its part, will ask economic managers to study the proposal, Executive Secretary Eduardo R. Ermita said.
"If officially presented by the SEC, we will push this to the economic team. We will await the proposal," he said.
In a separate interview, lawyer Reynaldo G. Geronimo, a partner at the Romulo Mabanta Buenaventura Sayoc and Delos Angeles Law Office, said the Securities and Regulation Code would have to be amended if the regulator was to be given fiscal autonomy.
"I am all for fiscal autonomy of the SEC since it’s a regulator. If this happens, it will also be given protection from litigation. Since they are regulators, they can hire the best lawyers and fees will be shouldered by the government. They can be fiscally autonomous," he said.
A fiscally autonomous agency is supposed to have freedom from outside control. Examples include the Judiciary, constitutional commissions and the Office of the Ombudsman, which all must independently discharge their duties before and after their yearly budgets are released.
Ms. Barin denied lawmakers’ charges that they had been remiss in their duties. "Up to this time, I can’t accept that we have been negligent. We have exerted all efforts to perform the duties of our office but inadequacies, technical and financial, have affected our ability to exercise those duties as people expected us to do," she said.
The pre-need industry was reported to have incurred a deficit of P47 billion as of June, while end-2008 figures were expected to have worsened further as a result of the US financial crisis. The value of the sector’s trust fund holdings plummeted after its securities and bond investments plunged following the turmoil unleashed by the US subprime crisis.
Senate Majority Floor leader Juan Miguel Zubiri earlier proposed to allocate a tenth of the P10-billion economic stimulus package for livelihood programs to bail out pre-need plan holders, warning that hundreds of thousands will be affected if the industry collapses.
But Federation of Pre-need Companies of the Philippines President Jose Miguel Vazquez earlier said his group did not plan to seek a government bailout, but would not refuse one if offered.
He said the group had asked the SEC to relax rules on booking losses and building up capital, which the regulator approved in December, as their trust funds posted losses due to volatile markets. — Bernardette S. Sto. Domingo
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