SOURCES OF POWER
It was during Monsod’s term at NEDA that its director general, drawing lessons from the past, was concurrently designated as Secretary of Socioeconomic Planning and Development. Monsod also initiated NEDA's commendable turnaround from its image of a Marcos rubber stamp — although the Aquino administration continued to convene the Coordinating Council for the Philippine Assistance Plan (CCPAP) that usurped NEDA's investment planning function.

Yet while the powers and functions do reside in the NEDA Board chaired by the president, the NEDA director general is not as powerless and less influential as Neri had portrayed the position to be. The director general, as chief executive officer of the NEDA Secretariat, exercises general supervision and control over the agency's technical and administrative personnel. The Secretariat, in turn, serves as the research and technical support arm of the NEDA Board in all the various aspects of development planning and policy formulation, coordination, evaluation, and monitoring of plan implementation.

The NEDA director general is also vice chairperson of the NEDA Board, as well as co-chair of four of the six cabinet-level inter-agency committees that provide assistance to it: Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC), Investment Coordination Committee (ICC), Social Development Committee (SDC), and Committee on Tariff and Related Matters (CTRM). He chairs the other two committees: Infrastructure Committee (InfraCom) and Regional Development Committee (RDCom).

In light of the NBN controversy, Medalla, the NEDA chief during Joseph Estrada's brief presidency, said the public should also be made to understand the dynamics between the two NEDAs: the "NEDA sa Pasig," the NEDA Secretariat under the director general with its offices in Ortigas in Pasig City, and "NEDA sa Pasig River," an obvious allusion to Malacañang, the seat of executive power.

Medalla said he was disturbed while listening to Neri explain during the Senate hearing the NEDA project evaluation process and how the national broadband deal bagged by ZTE Corporation got past NEDA. It was evident, he said, which of the two NEDAs had managed to gain the upper hand.

As NEDA director general, Medalla said it was his job to "stop bad things and make good things better." For the many times he said “no” to proposed projects, particularly recalling the proposal to extend the MRT 3 line from North Avenue to Monumento in Caloocan City, he said Estrada came to the point of casually referring to him as "Dr. No."

To Medalla, Neri's justification that NEDA does not look at the financial side of the project is a "distortion." Medalla said it is precisely NEDA's role to determine how a project should be financed, whether it is going to be under a BOT scheme or will be funded by official development assistance (ODA). “(But) here, you see a NEDA policy completely reversed by a line agency,” he said. “Unless, of course, it's been changed in private."

PROTECTING PROJECTS FROM 'CROCODILES'
Attempts to bypass NEDA have actually reached the level of amendments to the implementing rules and regulations of the BOT Law that have been in the pipeline for the past year. Among the proposed changes — which the private sector and multilateral lending institutions are opposed to — are replacing the two-pass approval system with a one-pass one, limiting NEDA-ICC's role to approving only the list of priority projects, and giving the authority to approve individual projects and contracts to implementing agencies or local government units.

"But this is like leaving the zoo to be guarded by crocodiles," remarked Habito at the UP forum. He added that his enduring recollection of NEDA is encapsuled in a quote from the late journalist Luis Beltran: that it is the only agency “na hindi nalalagyan (cannot be bribed).”

Habito was NEDA director general under the Ramos administration. In his column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, he had also noted that the NEDA’s clout lies in its role in the evaluation and approval of ODA-funded projects, which was what the NBN project was supposed to be. Republic Act 8555, or the Official Development Assistance Act, is explicit as well about the submission to NEDA by all concerned implementing and oversight agencies of all information and reports it may require in its review of draft contracts.

Habito said, too, that RA 8555 does not allow ODA funds to be used "directly or indirectly for...telephone programs contracted as of January 1, 1996, except basic telephone programs and projects for rural areas not adequately serviced and/or currently developed by private enterprises.” No doubt, the NBN project was nothing less than a very ambitious telecommunications undertaking.

On the issue of foreign grants and concessional loans, Medalla also believes that NEDA had been remiss in its obligation as stipulated in the ODA law. Under Section 4, it is NEDA's duty to ensure that the ODA obtained shall be for previously identified national priority projects that are urgent or necessary. ODA, the provision further stated, shall not be accepted or utilized solely because of its availability, convenience, or accessibility.

At the forum, Habito recalled that even during his tenure at NEDA, there was already a general desire to bypass the agency as it was perceived to be an "unnecessary obstacle" to government projects. Habito recounted that then President Fidel Ramos had told him that the feedback he got from some in the private sector about NEDA was that it was doing "too much analysis to the point of paralysis." Ramos, a former military man, was known for having projects “fast-tracked.”

But Habito said he told Ramos that “NEDA is there to protect him from Senate blue ribbon committee investigations." At the very least, said Habito, NEDA's project evaluation process should help agencies anticipate issues and questions to be raised during meetings of the NEDA Board and NEDA-ICC.

Paderanga, who was NEDA director general during the Aquino administration, also defended the agency’s duty to make its own expert comments on proposed projects. During his time, he said, NEDA saw to it that two documents were submitted for review by the NEDA-ICC: the feasibility studies of the implementing agencies and the NEDA report containing its objective comments on the studies.

"What NEDA should do,” he said, “is to look at the socioeconomic costs and benefits of the projects, rank them, and then identify which of these are priority projects." The search for funding is also within NEDA's area of expertise, he also said, as it is the one coordinating with assistance agencies. "NEDA,” said Paderanga, “would know their preferences, what funds are available for what types of projects."