SEN. Risa Hontiveros yesterday demanded that the National Security Council immediately do a security audit of third telco Dito Telecoms, even as she questioned government’s seeming inaction on her request that it assess the risks of allowing a firm co-owned by a Chinese company to operate in the country.
Hontiveros asked the NSC why it was taking it do the security edit, which she has repeatedly asked the council to do.
“I have been calling the attention of the government on my various concerns about Dito Telco but not one of them was granted. I hope the government will heed my calls because these are for the interests of the Filipino people,” Hontiveros said.
The senator made her statements after the United States last week expanded its list of blacklisted Chinese firms over their links to Beijing’s “military-industrial complex.” This means that these Chinese firms are off limits to American investors.
In November last year, the US issued a list of 31 Chinese companies deemed to be supplying or supporting China’s military and security apparatus. Due to legal challenges, US President Joe Biden ordered a review of the list, which led to the expansion of the list to 51 firms that Americans are barred from having a stake in.
Among the Chinese firms blacklisted were China Mobile, China Telecom, video surveillance firm Hikvision, China Railway Construction Corp., and China National Offshore Oil Corp., among others.
The investment ban will take effect on August 2.
Hontiveros said China Telecom, which has a 40 percent stake at Dito Telco, was included in the blacklisted companies “due to their (US) suspicions that they (China Telecom) supply support (to) China’s military and security apparatus.”
She said China Telecom is 100 percent owned and fully controlled by the Chinese government, and reports directly to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information, which is under the State Council of the People’s Republic of China.
