What is the difference?
Independent minority solon, Albay 1st district Rep. Edcel Lagman asked this question Saturday, Dec. 10 after it was learned that the composition of the board of directors of the proposed Maharlika Wealth Fund Corporation (MWFC) has been overhauled.
The biggest change in the MWFC is that the President of the Philippines will no longer sit as chairman of the board of directors. Instead, the secretary of the Department of Finance (DOF) will be the chairman.
"From the President to his alter ego, the finance secretary, to chair the Maharlika investment corporation – what is the difference?" Lagman said in a statement.
"The finance secretary serves at the pleasure of the President and must conform to the President’s bidding to retain his position," he noted.
The MWFC will oversee the use of the MWF, which is essentially a sovereign wealth fund akin to those from the Philippines' Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) neighbors.
"If ever the Maharlika Sovereign Wealth Fund is created, its corporate management must be independent from partisan control and interference," Lagman, president of the Liberal Party (LP), said.
"The chair of the Maharlika Investment Corporation must be a truly qualified and experienced economic manager from the private sector," he further reckoned.
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The composition of the MWFC Board of Directors was amended during Friday's House Committee on Appropriations hearing that tackled the funding provision of the unnumbered MWF bill.