FOR today, allow me to share a fairy tale on how a “small” private corporation engaged in the printing business became 20 times richer while the rest of the world were suffering heavy losses in view of the economic slump brought about by the virus from Wuhan, China.
Just like the rest of us, JC Palaboy is a dreamer but what makes him special is that he gets to hit his goal real fast – by engaging in dubious businesses in connivance with crooks in the government via influence peddling.
JC Palaboy, who is into printing for who knows how long, has been trying to do business with the Department of Education (DepEd) where he used to print text books for public school students. I remember those times that he would hop from one region to another just to join public biddings — if it was ever a public bidding at all.
Back then, he would corner government contracts by a few millions worth. But knowing JC Palaboy, he is somebody whose satisfaction seemed beyond the word ambitious. And so he set his sight to much bigger contracts at the education department where he has been repeatedly turned down because his printing business is not qualified under the standards provided in the existing laws covering government procurement. To cut the long story short, he failed to go bigtime.
In 2019, JC Palaboy decided to satisfy the agency’s checklist of requirements for bidders. He submitted his corporate financial statement showing that his business has grown to the tune of a little less than a hundred million pesos. He also secured an audited financial statement and got himself to qualify for government contracts amounting to P100 million and below.
The following year, the global pandemic came in and shattered economies and businesses around the world, and that did not exempt the Philippines. It was a total standstill. No malls, no public transport, no factories, no work. There was an economic lull as the government imposed a halt in non-essential business operations.
Face-to-face classes in both public and private schools were also suspended. However, the government realized that there is no way to stop the school year 2020-2021 because existing laws do not allow deferment of classes — for which reason the government, through the DepEd, decided to formulate ways to enable schooling to push through without compromising the health and safety of millions of students.
And so comes the blended learning system which includes the use of printed modules for distribution to students who’ll be learning the hard way, on their own and at the comfort of their home — or perhaps with a little help from the parents.
In the process, DepEd sought for private printing companies to join the “public bidding” for billions worth of printing contracts. JC Palaboy made sure he gets a crack at the billions worth of contracts.
JC Palaboy won the bidding for the previous two quarters for the DepEd modules to be distributed to students nationwide, using spurious documents reflecting on his Audited Financial Statement (AFS) and Net Financial Contracting Capacity (NFCC). The contract amount is a whopping P1.1 billion, which is 11 times more than his limit as reflected in his 2019 and 2020 NFCC.
Looking back, JC Palaboy declared a net worth amounting to less than P100 million from which reason he was given a NFCC that allowed him to join public biddings for contracts amounting to P100 million at the most.
JC Palaboy must have been earning a lot while the likes of Ramon Ang, Lucio Tan, Manny Pangilinan, Enrique Razon, Enrique Zobel, Henry Sy, Manuel Villar and Dennis Uy were suffering heavy losses for him to claim that he is 20 times richer at a time when many others were forced to scale down or shutdown for good because of bankruptcy. His new NFCC: P1.99 billion.
There is something sinister in here and this requires no less than President Rodrigo Duterte’s drastic measures. Mr. President, this JC Palaboy is trying to fool the government. He doesn’t seem convinced that you are serious when you utter these words — “Not a whiff of corruption.”