BACANI VS.

NACOCO
100 Phil. 468 (1956) ISSUE: Whether or not NACOCO is a government entity. FACTS: Plaintiffs herein are court stenographers assigned in Branch VI of the Court of First Instance of Manila. During the pendency of Civil Case No. 2293 of said court, entitled Francisco Sycip vs. National Coconut Corporation, Assistant Corporate Counsel Federico Alikpala, counsel for Defendant, requested said stenographers for copies of the transcript of the stenographic notes taken by them during the hearing. Plaintiffs complied with the request by delivering to Counsel Alikpala the needed transcript containing 714 pages and thereafter submitted to him their bills for the payment of their fees. The National Coconut Corporation paid the amount of P564 to Leopoldo T. Bacani and P150 to Mateo A. Matoto for said transcript at the rate of P1 per page. However, the Auditor General disallowed the payment of these fees and ordered that it shall be reimbursed for the reason that NACOCO, being a public corporation, is exempted from the fees. For reimbursement to take place, it was further ordered that the amount of P25 per payday be deducted from the salary of Bacani and P10 from the salary of Matoto. Hence, this petition. RULING: NO. There are functions which our government is required to exercise to promote its objectives as expressed in our Constitution and which are exercised by it as an attribute of sovereignty (constituent), and those which it may exercise to promote merely the welfare, progress and prosperity of the people ( ministrant). To this latter class belongs the organization of those corporations owned or controlled by the government to promote certain aspects of the economic life of our people such as the National Coconut Corporation. These are what we call government-owned or controlled corporations which may take on the form of a private enterprise or one organized with powers and formal characteristics of private corporations under the Corporation Law. They do not acquire the status of a government entity for the simple reason that they do not come under the classification of municipal or public corporation. NACOCO is a GOCC. Thus, not part of the government.
President Wilson enumerates the constituent functions as follows:

1. The keeping of order and providing for the protection of persons and property from violence and robbery. 2. The fixing of the legal relations between man and wife and between parents and children. 3. The regulation of the holding, transmission, and interchange of property, and the determination of its liabilities for debt or for crime. 4. The determination of contract rights between individuals. 5. The definition and punishment of crime. 6. The administration of justice in civil cases. 7. The determination of the political duties, privileges, and relations of citizens. 8. Dealings of the state with foreign powers: the preservation of the state from external danger or encroachment and the advancement of its international interests. The most important of the ministrant functions are: public works, public education, public charity, health and safety regulations, and regulations of trade and industry. The principles deter mining whether or not a government shall exercise certain of these optional functions are: (1) that a government should do for the public welfare those things which private capital would not naturally undertake and (2) that a government should do these things which by its very nature it

is better equipped to administer for the public welfare than is any private individual or group of individuals.