In a bid to combat systemic corruption, Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong has announced the city will implement blockchain technology for government transactions, starting October 15.
The announcement came during a Senate Committee on Science and Technology hearing on October 2, where the mayor shared disturbing findings from his brief stint as an investigator for the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI).
Mayor Magalong revealed that corruption in infrastructure projects has become a highly organized “cottage industry,” involving three main players: corrupt politicians, officials from the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), and dishonest contractors.
“The level, the depth, and the magnitude is really overwhelming,” Magalong stated, describing thousands of potential cases.
He cited one province alone with about 9,000 undocumented or “ghost” projects, where budget allocations mysteriously ballooned from millions to billions of pesos without transparency.
Faced with what he called “very weak alibis” from officials who resist transparency, Magalong is turning to blockchain technology. This digital system creates permanent, unchangeable records that cannot be altered or deleted.
“Why blockchain technology? Because it addresses weaknesses that traditional systems cannot,” Magalong explained. “If you introduce blockchain, they have no more reason to hide records.”
Baguio City will become one of the first local governments in the Philippines to implement this technology through a partnership with Bayani Chain.
The system will record infrastructure documents, procurement records, and city ordinances to ensure full transparency.
“Are you willing to open your data?” Magalong challenged other officials. “We in Baguio are very much willing.”
The mayor emphasized that the technology implementation took only about one month, suggesting that the main barrier to transparency isn’t technical capability but political will.
Magalong’s push for blockchain comes amid ongoing national corruption scandals. He stressed that trust must be built into systems themselves, noting that only four out of nearly 1,500 local governments in the Philippines have joined the global Open Government Partnership that promotes transparency.
Magalong calls the Baguio blockchain initiative a “whole of nation approach” to fighting corruption—one that could set a new standard for governance across the Philippines. — iNewsPH.com
