It is regrettable that bond flotation in a poor country like ours is still not doable and feasible for local government units. It’s unlike in developed countries like the US, Japan which have burgeoned middle class and where bond flotation is even prodded by this sector which has extra money to invest on their reliable government that would never go bankrupt unlike banks.
At this time of rice and price crisis, when people are tightening their belts, eroding further the economic capacity of the middle class, it’s nil to expect from people of this class, the prime mover of bond flotation in developed countries, to chip in even out of patriotism in an endeavor they can not yet fully grasp nor understand. Time isn’t yet ripe for bond flotation considering the still laggard financial and economic capacity of Nabunturan.
Bond flotation in the country has instead turned subject LGUs as guinea pigs in the expensive and doomed experiment leading to the unwitting discovery of scheming financial adviser-consultants, brokers and underwriters that a so lucrative money-making business has been spawned by the failure of the bond float to attract individual bond investors or buyers. This after they could earlier hoodwink unknowing LGU officials to spend for the expensive, extravagant and unnecessary preparatory and pre-construction costs and expenditures.
A street-smart wag, a former councilor in a neighbor town of Nabunturan, who frequents in malls and posh resto bars for his daltan (dala tanan) rackets, has even the gall to brag sometime that it was he who brought up the idea and brokered the bond flotation deal in Nabunturan. He promised a councilor who is with the minority, that he is sharing his future commission to the latter, who is refusing the offer. Santa banana! May the municipal resolution approving the feasibility study (FS) of the Nabunturan bond float be better snagged at the Comval provincial board.
As of now, observers are confused why pushers of the P90-million bond flotation in Nabunturan, that is already in the works, have proceeded in rashly approving the FS prepared by Preferred Ventures in second and third readings after they conducted what was obviously a lutong macao public hearing a month ago. The ABC representative Alfredo Manalop himself was quoted as saying to friends, wa ko kasabot aning bond flotation pero miboto gihapon ko pabor ato. Oh my gulay! If someone who is an insider in the close deliberation of the town’s bond flotation talks that way, the more we see on the general absence or low level of awareness and understanding of the Nabunturan people in this complicated concept of bond flotation.
This is understandable since the Nabunturan LGU had not even made extensive information dissemination on the bond float. The matter has been in the backburner since two years ago, during the second term of Mayor Macario Humol. But it’s only now on his last term that audible cries from fire victims, who were leasees of stalls of the old burned market building, have been heard over the projected high rentals and advances in the stalls and spaces pegged in the new public market building that the town bond flotation pushers want to construct. (For online edition, visit my blog at:http://cha4t.wordpress.com)
