FOI exceptions list down to 10 from 166The Office of the President is seeking to narrow down to 10 the original list of 166 exceptions to President Duterte’s executive order on the Freedom of Information (FOI) which will be released “by the end of this week or early next week.”(Malacañang Photo / mb.com.ph) MB FILE – President Duterte (right) signs an Executive Order on Freedom of Information (FOI), which he issued after Congress failed to approve the bill pending in the last 29 years. (Malacañang Photo / mb.com.ph)At Tuesday’s first House Committee on Public Information hearing on the 30 FOI bills, Presidential Communications Office (PCO) Assistant Secretary Christian Ablan disclosed that the Duterte government wanted to follow suit to the FOI laws of Australia and the United States which both have only nine exceptions. “The Office of the Executive Secretary is trying to categorize the exceptions into small number. The 160 recommended exceptions are recommendations and do not mean that they are the (final) exceptions. “The Office of the Executive Secretary will release the final categories of the exceptions by end of this week or early next week,” he said.

Source: Manila Bulletin October 11, 2016 07:41 UTC