📷: Prime Water, Ex-Sen. Manny Villar | bilyonaryo.com
The privatization of water districts that started with the willy-nilly policy of the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo administration and which Manny Villar seized as an opportunity to to expand his political base and multiply his wealth has become the bane of millions of Filipinos, with Villar’s Prime Water being the worst example of a company that has earned billions while depriving sustained supply of clean water to millions of Filipinos in 134 districts out of 584 districts nationwide.
Of course, the basic error in this policy is that consumers were forced to surrender their oversight on water districts, which are technically under the supervision of the Local Waterworks Utilities Administration (LWUA), which became notorious after a politician took over it purchased a bankrupted bank from the Gatchalians in violation of the agency’s charter. That politician was convicted and should be in prison by now. It should be the same fate of the Villars, who have earned billions from Prime Water’s control of water districts since 2018.
The Villar-owned PrimeWater curiously dominated the water supply and services in 161 cities and municipalities across 16 regions, and these water districts also own pieces of real estate that are more than attractive to the landbanking Villars, who are also into the memorial park business, commercial centers and residential and condominium projects all over the country. The principal reason advanced to justify the privatization of water services in urbanizing rural areas and sprawling cities in Bulacan and Cavite was to “improve the water service” but in the cases of Dasmarinas City, Silang, Cavite, and the cities of Trece Martires and Tagaytay, water supply has became erratic and faucets run dry for most of the day. In Dasmarinas City, water flows from spigots for only six hours a day.
Arroyo worsened the water crisis when she reduced subsidies for local government-run water services, forcing them to privatize, to the absolute delight of the Villars and other plutocrats. Under her aegis, the nation saw water tariffs skyrocketing from 1997 to 2007 for Maynilad and Manila Water. Maynilad rates zoomed by 358% under the MWSS privatizations scheme while Manila Water’s tariffs soared by 414%. What this meant was that the two concessionaires were amply rewarded, the Philippine Collegian reported in March 2025. For Arroyo and other neo-liberal economists, the silver bullet is always privatization and they pay no heed to the brutal truth that Maynilad and Manila Water, like PrimeWater, are for-profit corporations that do not give a hoot about maintaining better service in distributing safe water.
Under Section 2.1 of the 2023 National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Guidelines for the privatization of government entities, privatization should be resorted to only “if there will be better value for money for the government.” But the opposite has happened, as local water districts in other areas such as Bulacan recorded a significant income loss after partnering with PrimeWater. Mimi Doringo, secretary-general of Kadamay and a senatorial candidate of the Makabayan Coalition, told the Philippine Collegian that the water district in San Jose del Monte City in Bulacan said “last year, ang report ay negative na ang kinikita ng local water district habang yung serbisyo sa mamamayan ay hindi nga gumaganda. Papangit nang papangit lalo yung serbisyo.” IBON Foundation and water watchdog Water for the People Network warned that inordinate increases in water rates impoverish the poor. Subsidies do not solve the core issue of PrimeWater’s bad service. She instead called for junking the corporation’s privatization agreements with all the local water districts it has partnered with.
PrimeWater entered into a joint venture with the local water district of San Jose Del Monte in 2018, under Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency when Camille Villar’s brother Mark was the public works secretary. PrimeWater Infrastructure Corp. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Prime Asset Ventures Inc., owned by their other brother, Manuel Paolo A. Villar. The company also controls the water districts in Marilao, Malolos, Meycauayan, San Ildefonso and San Rafael. San Jose del Monte residents are furious since their water district was functioning well before PrimeWater came in like a thief in the night. From 2015 to 2016, the district a record-high net income of P187 million in both years and was among the top 5 districts nationwide in net income. In 2017, the district posted a net income of P126.4 million. With PrimeWater at the helm, the net income in 2018 slid to P49.2 million and in 2019, it dropped to an unbelievable P2.2 million and went negative P5 million in 2020. The Commission on Audit (COA) sensed that the water district was at the losing end of the bargain but the district argued that getting a bigger share of the revenue meant an increase in water rates. “The way that [they] put it is like saying that it is but normal for PrimeWater to earn P180 million annually while it is acceptable for the government as its partner to earn only P1 million to P4 million or even occasional losses of P5 million per annum,” auditors argued. While the district was losing, PrimeWater had been steadily increasing its net profit and even had a windfall of a billion pesos in 2022. From only P196 million net profit in 2017, the figure nearly tripled to P425 million in 2019. In 2023, it posted a net profit of P1.18 billion.
Nationwide, PrimeWater claims to be servicing 1.7 million households. Not content with merely controlling water districts, the Villar company is also venturing into the control of 18 water projects in Cavite through a deal with the National Irrigation Administration (NIA), which controls water supply from 292 rivers nationwide under authority from the National Water Resources Board (NWRB.) The Philippines is notorious for its low rate of water impounding at 68 cubic meters per person, compared to 680 cu. m. per person in Thailand and 1,100 cu. m. in Vietnam. Given the record of PrimeWater and the company’s failure to establish water treatment and septage treatment plants, PrimeWater should be banned from any water project nationwide.
Already, a voter revolt is snowballing in Bulacan. Cavite and other provinces where PrimeWater controls water districts. This means dire consequences for Camille Villar, who just lost Marcos Jr. partisans in Northern Luzon owing to Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio’s endorsement of her senatorial run. Earlier, Imee Marcos also lost a sizeable bloc of voters from her Northern Luzon redoubt. Despite Sara’s endorsement of both Camille and Imee, both of them already lost support from Duterte diehards when they ran as part of the Alyansa para sa Bagong Pilipino (ABP) senatorial slate. They are not black cows on a dark night for nothing, as Hegel said, citing a Yiddish proverb. (DIEGO MORRA)
