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18 Reasons Why WE OPPOSE House Bill 6398 [Position Paper on Maharlika

Wealth Fund (MWF)/PH Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF)]

Technical Report · December 2022

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.16466.22720/2

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18 Reasons Why WE OPPOSE House Bill 6398

[Maharlika Wealth Fund (MWF)/PH Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF)]

Position Paper submitted by David Michael M. San Juan1 in response to an

invitation of the Philippine House of Representatives’ Committee on Banks and
Financial Intermediaries (CBFI) to its “briefing” on House Bill 6398 scheduled on
05 December 2022
~~~

While in theory, a sovereign wealth fund (SWF) can help a national government to more
effectively and more efficiently pool available resources to finance national development
and also maximize profits which could then be distributed to citizens, a closer look at the
original text of House Bill 6398 (and even the revised draft as of 01 December 2022,
referred to as the “revised draft” hereafter) – filed just last November 28, 2022 and which
proponents seem hell bent to approve by December 12, 2022 – makes popular calls for
the bill’s outright rejection/scrapping/junking logical. This position paper presents at
least 18 reasons why we the people oppose House Bill 6398. More than 22,000
citizens (and counting) support these arguments via a change.org petition.

1. The bill would want to unconstitutionally expropriate the collective property of

SSS and GSIS members (current workers/contributors and pensioners) without
their consent, and against their will in fact.
The bill states that at least “One hundred Twenty-Five Billion Pesos (PhP125 Billion)”
from GSIS funds and “Fifty Billion Pesos (PhP50 Billion)” from SSS funds will be allotted
for the MWF’s “capitalization.” Without the consent of SSS and GSIS members on any
change in the handling of their contributions and pension funds, no one can touch and
move these funds at will, beyond the current limitations set by the organic laws of SSS
and GSIS. These laws cannot be circumvented, reversed, or revised in any way without
the full consent of all SSS and GSIS members. Hence, if the bill’s proponents insist on
using SSS and GSIS funds for the MWF, they would have to require SSS and GSIS to
ask every member and pensioner whether or not they’re willing to risk their money to be
used as the bulk of the MWF’s capitalization. Consent would be almost impossible to

1
Full Professor at De La Salle University-Manila and Fellow at the Southeast Asia Research Center & Hub (SEARCH) in
the same university; convener of Professionals for a Progressive Economy (PPE) and Bantay Lehislatura/Legislative
Watch; Associate Member of Division I (Governmental, Educational and International Policies) of the National
Research Council of the Philippines (NRCP); served as an ACT Teachers Partylist nominee in the 2016, 2019, and 2022
elections.
 2

secure because, as Atty. Howie Calleja (2022) says, “the SSS and GSIS funds are
personal contributions of their respective members who own the funds. Thus, the income
of SSS and GSIS investible funds must benefit only their respective members. So,
investing the members’ contribution that would benefit non-members as well is clearly
illegal. Using private property for a public purpose without just compensation is illegal and
unconstitutional.” At any rate, the full consent of SSS and GSIS members and pensioners
will have to be secured as these are collective pension funds, and hence, the presence
of thousands of dissenters – as evident in the snowballing petition against the passage
of House Bill 6398 – automatically prohibits the SSS and GSIS from providing billions of
pesos of capitalization for the MWF. Hence, any bill is a non-starter for as long as SSS
and GSIS funds are included as sources for MWF’s capitalization. The government has
no right to gamble away the people’s money, the working people’s pension funds. Even
if sovereign guarantees are included in the final bill, in case of MWF’s losses, that means
that taxpayers would have to cough up something to cover such losses.
Workers/employees whose pension funds are at stake are also taxpayers. Hence, if the
MWF loses money, we will be gisado sa sariling mantika (sautéed in one’s own lard).

2. The bill has no clear and solid provision for ample worker/employee
representation in the fund's governing body, considering that a bulk of the fund
will technically come from GSIS and SSS members' pooled contributions.

In the revised draft, there is NO EXPLICIT MENTION that the “Eleven (11) Regular
Members” of the MWF’s board “representing the Fund’s shareholders” would come from
actual representatives of workers/employees (e.g. elected officials of labor unions, labor
federations, teachers’ organizations etc.). The bill’s additional qualifications for board
members as having “substantial experience and expertise in any of the following: (i)
corporate governance and administration, (ii) investment in financial assets, (iii)
management of investments in the global and local markets” instantly narrows the path
of board membership for genuine representatives of workers/employees and unjustly
favors typical bureaucrats, corporate nominees, and investment managers who don’t and
cannot represent working class interest and most of the times even arguably work against
the general interest of employees. Without a clear provision that explicitly allots the
majority of seats and the chairmanship of the board to genuine representatives of
workers/employees (ideally chosen through elections where labor unions, labor
federations, teachers’ organizations will field nominees in either a bottom-up process or
an election process akin to primaries), the bill must be rejected.

3. The bill is among the worst example of clear conflict of interest which would
instantly warrant its rejection, especially within the context of the country’s
dynasty-infested and oligarch-controlled political system which cannot be
remedied without the passage of related measures for good governance.
 3

The revised draft states that “(t)he President of the Philippines shall sit as the
Chairperson” of the MWF’s board. The bill is of course co-authored by his son and his
first cousin. This is a clear case of conflict of interest. Granted for the sake of argument
that the bill is not co-authored by the president’s relatives and that the president is no
longer the designated chairperson of the MWF, conflict of interest would still exist for as
long as corrupt dynasties are in power and oligarchs and their corporations are able to
“buy” political favors through both recorded and unrecorded campaign donations to the
same corrupt dynasties. Any ruling dynasty – in control of the MWF – would then be able
to appoint board members of the MWF from corporate nominees of their oligarch-friends,
who would in turn invest MWF’s funds to the corporations or business ventures of their
oligarch-patrons. Without strong regulations in place, legislators and top executive
officials can also exploit loopholes to enrich themselves through machinations that would
result to MWF investments for companies where their relatives and friends have stocks
or shares.

Given the dominance of corrupt political dynasties and oligarchs in our system, for any
discussion on SWF creation to prosper, there SHOULD BE prohibitions on corporate and
dynastic connections of board members and the advisory body members, Maharlika
Wealth Fund Corporation (MWFC) officials, employees, portfolio managers, and
consultants – prohibitions which are not currently in the bill. Otherwise, this multibillion-
peso fund will just be a way to enrich corporations favored by ruling dynasties and their
oligarch-friends, or worse, to finance their own family businesses.

4. Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) and Development Bank of the Philippines
(DBP) funds will also be used for the fund, prospectively drastically reducing the
funds which the said government banks could lend ordinary citizens and to micro,
small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) which serve as the backbone of our
economy, in terms of jobs creation.
Based on LBP’s latest annual report (2021) and DBP’s latest annual report (2020), these
two government banks can still further improve on their lending activities for MSMEs vis-
a-vis their lending to other sectors. Hence, funneling at least “Fifty Billion Pesos (PhP50
Billion)” from LBP and “Twenty-Five Billion Pesos (PhP25 Billion)” from DBP for the MWF
will certainly reduce their capacity to help MSMEs especially in the areas/subsectors that
they are mandated to prioritize.

5. Using LBP funds for MWF is illegal unless coconut farmers give their full
consent.
Considering that the United Coconut Planters Bank (UCPB) – which is now merged with
the LBP – has been acquired through the coco levy funds collected from farmers by the
Marcos dictatorship “between 1973 and 1982” (Ramos, 2015), the said surviving coconut
farmers or their rightful heirs are technically shareholders of the LBP. Hence, Congress
 4

can’t compel LBP to cough up funds for the MWF without the said coconut farmers’ and/or
their heirs’ full consent.

6. GSIS & SSS are able to invest pooled members’ contributions into so many
things even without the MWF in place; hence, MWF is an unnecessary concoction
that would only further bloat existing bureaucracy and consequently double if not
triple the millions if not billions of pesos of unnecessary or wasteful administrative
expenses.

In essence, the bill will certainly at least double the bureaucracy and administrative
expenses to run the MWF for purposes that are very similar to what the SSS and GSIS
are now able to do. It must be pointed out that SSS, for example, is a top-heavy
bureaucracy in itself with countless vice-presidents who receive almost a dozen of
“annual benefits” with a combined total ranging from 231,256.00 pesos to 623,938.00
pesos, on top of their monthly salaries and allowances with a combined total ranging from
91,028.00 pesos to 300,969.00 pesos. Is it worth duplicating (rather than rightfully
trimming down!) such expensive bureaucracy? The next reason provides an answer.

7. Without guaranteed profits that are beyond what the SSS and GSIS are able to
reap for their members, there is no justification to create another set of
bureaucracy that duplicates existing bureaucracy’s functions.

In 2019, GSIS distributed a “cash benefit to its active members amounting to Php174
million.” No similar data is available for regular SSS contributions. In 2022, SSS
announced “that the pension fund’s mandatory provident fund for its
members...generated an income of PHP333.77 million with a corresponding return of 6.39
percent in the first year of its implementation.” Meanwhile, for benchmarking purposes, in
the period 2011-2021, the mandatory Pag-IBIG Regular Savings dividend rate ranged
from a low 4.08% in 2013 to a peak of 7.61% in 2017, while the voluntary MP2 (Modified
Pag-IBIG 2) Savings dividend rate ranged from a low 4.63% in 2011 to a peak of 8.11%
in 2017. The MWF would have to guarantee at least going higher than the aforementioned
peaks, considering that its formation doubles the bureaucracy and administrative
expenses. Unfortunately, the bill on MWF does not guarantee such higher profits. Be that
as it may, Congress should also start scrutinizing SSS and GSIS performance,
considering that either or both are regularly hiking or contemplating to hike premium
contributions from employees (Baron, 2021; Punay, 2021) despite their inability to
sufficiently show that they are managing funds well enough to reap significant profits for
the members’ benefits, especially if compared with the seemingly relatively better
performance of Pag-ibig Fund at least in terms of the dividend rate.

8. The bill has no mechanism to directly give profits to citizens (especially SSS and
GSIS members). Profits would instead be channeled to the government financial
 5

institutions (GFIs), despite the fact that some similar schemes such as the Alaska
Permanent Fund have mechanisms for annual direct profit distribution to citizens.

In the original bill, the proponents intend that the profits are given to the GFIs that
contribute to the MWF (such as SSS and GSIS). The revised draft bill has become even
more vague by stating a generic provision that “(t)he Board shall determine the dividend
policy of the MWFC.” Hence, this provision can still theoretically lead to the original bill’s
intention of channeling the profits to GFIs rather than being directly given to citizens. Such
policy would deem the MWF almost useless for citizens, unlike other schemes that
provide regular dividends directly to citizens. For example, in 2022, each qualified
Alaskan received $3,284.00 as dividend from the Alaska Permanent Fund (State of
Alaska, 2022). Alaskans receive their dividends yearly throughout the fund’s 41-year
history. A similar “long-running program is the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Casino
Dividend in North Carolina. Since 1997, revenue from a casino on tribal land has been
given to every tribal member, no strings attached. Each person gets on average
somewhere between $4,000 and $6,000 per year” (Samuel, 2020). Such regular
dividends were beneficial to the community as stated in a study (Marinescu, 2019):
“economists have been able to assess the effect of the cash transfer. The data show
members who receive the casino dividend work the same number of hours as those who
do not, have improved education (as much as one extra year for the poorest Cherokee
households), commit less crime, and have improved mental health and decreased
addiction.” In the case of Singapore, their SWF distributes no actual dividend to citizens
but Singaporeans benefits “from lower income taxes (capped at 22%)” (Global SWF,
2022) way below the income tax rates in the Philippines.

9. The bill's limit on administrative and operating expenses is not good enough,
especially that the MWFC’s officers and employees are exempted from the Salary
Standardization Act (which mandates necessary limitations on salaries and
allowances, among other things).
Administrative and operating expenses are typically understood to include salaries and
benefits. Thus, the bill’s provision that exempts the fund’s employees and officers from
the Salary Standardization Act may lead to higher than typical administrative and
operating expenses which would render the fund less viable and less profitable than
existing similar investing entities such as SSS and GSIS. Such higher administrative and
operating expenses are intolerable especially that the MWF does not guarantee higher
profits for citizens whose money are at stake.

10. Honoraria and allowances and reimbursements for the fund's bureaucrats are
unacceptable, especially that most of them will certainly come from salaried
government or corporate posts too.
 6

Provisions on honoraria, allowances, and reimbursements in the current bill are too
vague, and thus, can be prone to abuse. These payments are in fact not necessary
considering that most of the prospective board members of the MWF under the current
bill would likely have high-paying jobs/posts, most of whom would be serving the MWF
only on a part-time basis, with minimal tasks, while retaining their current jobs/posts.
Thus, they should not be paid at all, or they should be paid with a minimal honorarium
only.

11. The bill’s provision on rewards, incentives, and bonuses for bureaucrats is
capricious and dangerous without stronger provisions on public accountability of
the fund’s administrators.

Considering that the bill does not guarantee profits and has no provision of direct profit
distribution to citizens, and does not include stronger provisions for public accountability,
there’s a strong possibility that the provision on rewards, incentives, and bonuses will
allow MWF to morph into a bacchanalia of unwarranted private profit-taking at the
expense of public funds. It must be pointed out that the current bill exempts the MWF’s
officers and employees from existing salary caps; hence, additional rewards, incentives,
and bonuses are too much to be acceptable to workers and/or taxpayers who would
finance the MWF’s capitalization. Moreover, considering the sheer size of the fund, rather
than rewards, incentives, and bonuses, there should be penal provisions for employees
and/or officers who would try to or succeed in plundering the MWF or for those who would
make the fund lose much of its value.

12. The bill’s mention of “third party fees and all charges incurred in connection
with the establishment and management of the MIF” which will be charged to the
fund, sounds so fishy and unnecessary, especially without ample caps and
limitations in the bill.

The current bill does not even define what is covered by “third party,” and rather than
being limited to “custody fees, transaction fees, clearing fees, and management fees
payable to external fund managers,” the list of such fees can be prospectively multiplied
and expanded. It is also mind-boggling that the MWF would pay “management fees” to
“external fund managers,” when managing the fund is supposed to be the function of
MWFC employees and officers. Why would the MWF pay for external parties who would
perform tasks that the MWFC employees and officers are supposed to perform? Without
clearer definitions of and caps and limitations to such fees, the current bill should be
scrapped.
13. The bill allows investments on EXTREMELY HIGH-RISK “financial derivatives”
trade which was among the primary causes of the 2008 global financial crisis.
The bill’s proponents have seemingly forgotten what happened in 2008. Countless
studies and analyses identify these high-risk “financial derivatives” as one of the primary
 7

causes of the 2008 global financial crisis (Stiglitz, 2009; Stout, 2009; Hera, 2010; Ferrell
et al., 2011; Coker, 2015) which “wiped a total of $5 trillion (£3.3 trillion) off the value of
private pension funds” in “the 28 major economies covered in the study” (Stewart and
Sunderland, 2008). The crisis thus left an indelible mark even in popular culture, with the
movie “The Big Short” (2015) depicting how derivatives destroyed the global economy
then. Michael Moore’s documentary “Capitalism: A Love Story” (2009) as well as the Matt
Damon-narrated documentary “Inside Job” (2010), Ramin Bahrani-directed “99 Homes,”
(2014) and Fascinating Aida's song “The Market” do the same. All these bolster the
narrative backed by the abovementioned analyses that investing in high-risk “financial
derivatives” is like gambling away the people’s money in a casino where there are more
chances of losing big (if not everything). Some observers also highlight that the risks from
derivatives persist and “have morphed” with seemingly “well-intentioned moves to
safeguard the financial system” leading “to new vulnerabilities” (Das, 2022).
14. The bill allows investments in foreign bonds and possibly even in foreign
stocks/companies, which is unacceptable considering that our local communities
and industries badly need investments too, and considering that these investments
are also historically unstable.

The bill explicitly allows investments in foreign bonds, while it is silent on whether or not
foreign stocks and companies are covered in what it states as “(l)isted or unlisted equities,
whether common, preferred, or hybrids;” and “Joint Ventures or Co-Investments.” There
are strong indications that these could cover foreign stocks and companies if the pro-
foreign investments stance of one of the bill’s main proponents is taken into consideration
(Aurelio, 2022).

The country’s past experiences with foreign investments should make legislators think
twice on its feasibility. No exhaustive public record is available on whether or not the
financial crisis affected SSS and GSIS’ global investments despite warranted clamors for
full disclosure (Roxas, 2008; Chanco, 2008), but it must be pointed out that two years
after the crisis, a huge chunk of GSIS’ global investments was liquidated with “an actual
loss of P1.322 billion in 2010.” This was just three years after GSIS “awarded” that
“mandate to manage its $1-billion global investment program to ING Investment
Management and Credit Agricole Asset Management (Singapore) Ltd.” (De La Peña,
2007). Another report revealed that GSIS “began making overseas investments in 2008
– before the nadir of the global financial crisis – investing $600 million in stocks and
bonds” in countries that include the United States (Reuters Staff, 2013), the origin of the
2008 global financial crisis. With regard to foreign bonds, just recently, “(g)lobal bonds fall
(by) $2.6 trillion — its worst since 2008 financial crisis” (Zilber, 2022). In 2020, during the
early months of the coronavirus pandemic, in just a week, $3.6 trillion was “wiped off” the
global stock market (Otani and Santilli, 2020).
 8

Rather than invest in foreign bonds and foreign equities, legislators should think of ways
to use the country’s financial resources to boost local communities and industries

15. The bill's mention of investments on “Listed or unlisted equities...” and “Joint
ventures or co-Investments” may seem innocent but these can actually be used to
favor big business interests of corporations with links to ruling dynasties.

This is related to reason number 3. It’s public knowledge that past and present
administrations partly won due to campaign donations from oligarchs who in turn expect
political favors through appointments of their corporate nominees in various influential
cabinet posts, and at times, even awarded with juicy government contracts. Without a
total ban on political dynasties and tighter electoral campaign finance regulations, not to
mention regulations to stop the perennial yet unethical practice of the so-called revolving
door from government service to corporate jobs and vice-versa, MWF’s investment
priorities will be clearly tainted with vested interests.

16. As the bill allows the MWF to draw from the annual General Appropriations Act
or supplemental appropriations, this can possibly reduce available funds for vital
social services such as healthcare, education, housing etc.
This just means that the national budget can be used to shore up the MWF at any given
time. This will instantly reduce available funding for the aforementioned essential
services. It must be noted that in the past decades, the Philippine government is yet to
reach global standards for public expenditures on healthcare, education, Research &
Development (R&D, which is vital to innovation), and housing. Hence, the MWF would in
fact be siphoning off public funds away from public services, without guaranteed profits
and with a strong probability of losses due to high-risk investments. This is unacceptable
given the humungous social problems that our people face daily from hunger (Social
Weather Stations, 2022) and malnutrition, to poverty (San Juan, 2022a) and
homelessness and high out-of-pocket costs for healthcare (San Juan, 2021), which the
government are unable to resolve. Rather than risk public funds for global investments,
the government should prioritize pumping up money into programs to resolve these
problems related to our people’s basic needs.

17. The bill contains no provision to prioritize investments on “green” jobs creation
(especially in the renewable energy sector), agricultural modernization, and
industrialization, which could potentially limit any real national benefits from the
MWF’s operations.

One practical function of having an SWF is letting the State have a free hand in investing
on national development projects defined as those that benefit the most number of people
at the least cost. Given the current situation of the Philippines as an import-dependent
and export-oriented economy, the government should be prioritizing investments on
 9

agricultural modernization to boost local food supply (and possibly, hopefully gain food
sovereignty too) and industrialization to boost local industries that produce essential local
consumer goods. Mindful of the huge electricity costs from hydrocarbon-powered power
plants, the Philippines should also prioritize transitioning to a progressive green economy
(San Juan, 2020). Unfortunately, the bill does not include these in the investment priorities
of the MWF. Hence, the MWF has no prospective contribution to national development.

18.The bill is authored by at least two legislators connected to the plunderous

dynasty that the Filipino people ousted in 1986, and the same ruling dynasty will
have immense power over the sovereign wealth fund for sure.
Lest we forget, just to name a few examples, Marcos Sr. allowed his cronies to steal coco
levy contributions from farmers to purchase a local bank and some local stocks (G.R.
Nos. 177857-58, January 24, 2012), and the Marcos “conjugal dictatorship” claimed
ownership of a multimillion-dollar Swiss bank account, despite the fact that their combined
legal income is way below the amount in the said account (see G.R. No. 152154, July 15,
2003). Marcos Sr.’s heirs are back in power. Shall Congress allow the fox to guard the
chicken coop? All our chickens will be lost, if that happens. It is partly for this reason that
a number of prominent economists have been warning against the passage of the MWF
bill too (Punongbayan, 2022; Africa, 2022; Sta. Ana III, 2022; Yu, 2022).

The bill’s proponents and supporters love to mention Norway and Singapore, both rich
countries, have SWFs too. They fail to mention that Norway’s and Singapore’s scores in
the Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index is 85, while the
Philippines’ score is pegged at 33, in a scale where “100 is very clean and 0 is highly
corrupt.” The Philippines’ score is closer to Malaysia’s 48. Hence, notable columnists are
correct to point out that the Philippines’ MWF could end in a disaster like Malaysia’s 1MDB
scandal (David, 2022; Quezon III, 2022), despite expectations of a Norwegian- or
Singaporean-style SWF. Given the current socio-political context of the Philippines, the
very generous “exemptions and privileges” that the bill grants to the MWF and the MWFC
– such as exemptions from the GOCC Governance Act of 2011 and exemptions from the
Government Procurement Reform Act – will be prone to abuse, if not suspicious (and
hence unacceptable) from the start.

In view of the aforementioned reasons, we the people oppose the passage of House
Bill 6398.

In the short-term, if building up the people’s wealth is the genuine priority, we advocate
for income tax reductions for the masses and the middle class to directly strengthen the
purchasing power of the Filipino people. This is actually contained in House Bill 1855
[THE TAX REFORM ACT FOR THE MASSES AND THE MIDDLE CLASS (TRAMM)]
which was filed on July 12, 2022 and has been languishing at the committee level since
then. Perhaps Congress can find time to pass this on December 12, 2022, instead of
 10

House Bill 6398. If the proponents insist in passing an SWF bill, they should at the very
least ensure that all the defects identified in this position paper are remedied, and draw
financing for the SWF/MWF from sources such as reducing the salaries, allowances, and
confidential funds of top bureaucrats and elected officials (San Juan, 2022b) and
imposing a wealth tax on Filipino billionaires (Tadem 2022). Finally, they must ensure that
annual dividends from the fund are directly remitted to every Filipino citizen, rather than
funneled to the GFIs.
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Africa, Sonny. 2022. Maharlika Fund: Dubious, pretentious and self-serving. IBON
Foundation. https://www.ibon.org/maharlika-fund-dubious-pretentious-self-
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pretentious-self-serving
Aurelio, Julie. 2022. Maharlika fund proponent open to more discussions. Inquirer.
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Baron, Gabriela. 2021. SSS contribution hike set in 2025. Manila Bulletin.
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CpTv6la4
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De La Peña, Gerard. 2007. GSIS gives mandate for $1-B foreign fund. GMA News Online.
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_______________________________. 2010. Annual Report.
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2010-5
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