SEC i-View: Expensive Online Corporate Document Database

Only recently have I been using the Securities and Exchange Commission's S SEC i-VIew, the SEC's online database of corporate and partnership documents for a research paper in Agency and Partnership.

The cost for its use is very prohibitive for researching students, because the printing of documents is pegged at five pesos per page, and there are no student discounts for its use.

As we know too well, corporate documents (i.e. Articles of Incorporation, annual Financial Statements) are very voluminous and a researching student will have to be ready to spend some thousands just to get the documents he requires.

For my research, I had to get the Financial Statements of eight law partnerships from 2005-2009, and the average number of pages of these FSs are around 13-15.

So ang mahal.

To make it worse, the SEC does not allow access to the financial statements to be manually photocopied from their library. All documents must be sourced from the online database.

What's the point of this entry?

Well, the last time I checked, one of the purposes for the use of IT by government institutions is to make access to government services easier, better and more affordable to its citizens.

With prohibitive costs such a these, such a purpose may not be met at all, especially for students and concerned nonprofits.