Misor: From bankruptcy to financial stability

By LOUIE MALIZA
of Padayon Pilipino .

WHAT does a bankrupt organization mean?

By the way, the word bankrupt means “insolvent.” In other words, bankrupt means “unable to pay outstanding debts, or in case of government institutions, “unable to pay salaries for regular workers on time.”

Certainly, it takes good, intuitive, and determined managers to revive a financially bankrupt organization. When the workers and officials alike are on the edge of desperation, it takes someone with financial acumen and sound judgment to regain “lost grounds.”

Incidentally, this case actually took place five years ago in Misamis Oriental. With only P 500,000 cash in the provincial coffer and a total debt of about P 1.2 billion, the provincial government of Misamis Oriental was financially insolvent.

Then, the province could hardly pay the regular workers on time, and the “job orders” or “contract workers” would just wait for “financial leftovers” while their stomachs grumble.

Five years ago, in 2013, the Provincial Capitol, the seat of the provincial government of Misamis Oriental, was like a limping mendicant that roams amid the rubbles of uncertainty. How to revive and reinvigorate the drained financial coffers was an ordeal that the then newly elected Misamis Oriental provincial governor Bambi Emano had to face.

The young governor, fresh from his two terms finish in Congress, was facing a new kind of challenge. Although resolving problems was not new to Bambi, having been a two-termer congressman and a three-termer mayor, solving the insolvency of Misamis Oriental was very challenging, if not stressful.

In fact, a gossip was then circulating that the capitol workers were starving and were neck-deep in debts for the failure of the provincial government to pay their salaries and wages. Actually, the rumors were reportedly circulated by the political opposition to discredit Emano’s infantile administration.

The doomsayers also insinuated that Bambi Emano’s administration would become an object of ridicule and consternation in the months ahead.

Undaunted, Emano and his financial advisers prepared a financial prescription that would resuscitate the province’s ailing financial condition. In fact, Emano considered the adoption of financial scheme in lieu of filing anti-graft charges against those who plundered the financial resources of the province.

Marilou Rivera, one of Emano’s financial advisers, said that “Emano resisted the temptation of filing anti-graft charges against officials believed to be responsible in ‘robbing’ the taxpayers’ money.”

Instead, the young governor focused on how to pay the P 1.2 billion debts and the payment of salaries and wages of workers on time, Rivera said.

Emano knew that filing the anti-graft charges could wait, but the stomach of those who suffer the pangs of hunger could not survive any longer.

Governor Emano was right. Misamis Oriental has two sources of income – local and national. With the exception of the revenues from economic enterprises, generally, the local revenues remained unstable during the next 12-month period starting July 2013.

Inheriting a bankrupt provincial government at the start of his administration in 2013, Emano’s sterling performance as a public servant stabilized what was then an ailing financial condition of the province. He utilized the shares from the national government through the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) as the buffer zone for personal services. In addition, part of the IRA was spent to gradually settle the various obligations amounting to P 1.2 billion. Thus, from July 2013 to July 2014, the total revenue collection of Misamis Oriental totaled P 561,840,305. This year, 2018, Misamis Oriental joins the billionaire provinces after posting a total revenue of P 1.2 billion.

With the climbing annual revenues, the then bankrupt province of Misamis Oriental is now on the road to financial stability.

(Louie Maliza is a former business editor at Sunstar Cagayan de Oro. He is now with the provincial press office.)

(* Editor’s note: Starting this week, Gold Star Daily is reserving space in its opinion pages for the different political groups that want to win government seats in Cagayan de Oro and Misamis Oriental in next year’s elections. Our aim is to raise the level of issue-based and fact-based public discourse on matters of politics and governance while the competing political groups keep with good taste and propriety, things that have been lost and which many people no longer value in other public discussion platforms nowadays.

This should prove to be interesting in that the different groups are expected to convince the public why they deserve to be supported and why the others are less deserving or undeserving. The political writers, of course, will be partisan and will write based on the perspectives of their respective groups.

Space constraints don’t allow us to accommodate all the candidates [there are just too many of them], and writing for themselves may result in legal complications on their part later on given the election rules. And so, we asked the groups to choose their best writers and representatives who are not candidates to articulate their causes, advocacies, concerns and issues of the day once a week.

In Gold Star Daily’s opinion pages, there will be a battle of ideas. All the political groups have agreed and picked a day for their group columns. They have been informed about our newsroom deadline, the assigned days for their group columns, and rules against libel and irrational mudslinging. We wish to publish whatever they write as is, and so, we ask that they carefully think about what they write about, check their facts, reead and proofread their own work before submission.

What and how they choose to make use of the democratic space we are giving them through their representatives is entirely up to them now. At the end of the day, readers will just have to judge for themselves which groups have better ideas, clearer direction and governance agenda or which groups are all trash and really have nothing to offer.)