MANILA, Philippines — The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) has failed to dispose of the ill-gotten properties it recovered from the cronies of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos, according to a report of the Commission on Audit (COA).

The report, posted on the COA website over the weekend, said there were nine recovered properties set for sale in 2017, but not one has been sold as of yearend.

The list was contained in the privatization plan that the PCGG submitted to the Department of Justice on April 20, 2017.

“The audit team said that during the year, there was no public bidding conducted to privatize the assets. The management failed to dispose of the properties from previous years,” the COA report read.

The audit body said the last time the PCGG was able to dispose of the ill-gotten properties was in 2014, where only three of the 11 assets scheduled for privatization were sold to private buyers.

Had the nine properties set for bidding in 2017 been sold, these would have generated P336.014 million in income to the government.

The amount was supposed to be used in the implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) as provided under Republic Act 6657.

The nine properties listed for disposal included a 26,812-hectare Bredco property in Bacolod City which was surrendered to the government in a compromise agreement with Antonio Martel and Simplicio Palanca; a 6.4-hectare property in General Mariano Alvarez, Cavite surrendered by Jose Campos; a 5,952-square meter lot in Naga City recovered from Roberto Benedicto’s Banahaw Broadcasting Corp.; a 2,335-sqm lot in Francisco Evergreen Subdivision in Tagaytay City; a 1,000-sqm Puerto Galera property in Oriental Mindoro recovered from Jolly Bugarin; a 300-sqm lot in Calapan, Oriental Mindoro also from Bugarin; a 480-sqm lot Kingswood Property in Emerald Court Subdivision, Caloocan City surrendered by former Marcos aide Alejo Ganut Jr.; two 300-sqm lots in Pangarap Village, Caloocan City also from Ganut.

The COA said the properties were not sold due to PCGG’s failure to reappraise them.

During the exit conference with the audit team, PCGG acting chairman Reynold Munsayac admitted that the commission is hesitant to privatize the assets due to COA’s issuance of notices of charge against the past management.

The COA issues a notice against a transaction if the tax, customs duties or appraisal of property is pegged lower than the expected or targeted valuation.

Munsayac said it was the Department of Finance and the Privatization Council that set the floor prices of the previously disposed properties, but the COA still set a higher value.

He promised that the PCGG management would work with the COA for the reappraisal of the value of the properties and set new floor prices.

P377.66-M remittance

Despite the failure to sell any property in 2017, the COA said the PCGG was able to remit to the Bureau of Treasury (BoTr) a total of P377.66 million, which exceeded the commission’s remittance target for the year.

The COA said the remittance did not come from PCGG’s recovery efforts but from the sums earned from the cases it won against the Marcos family and its cronies in previous years.