3 Trillion Pesos Budget for 2016 submitted to Congress

Budget Secretary Butch Abad on Tuesday confirmed that legislators have allocations for their districts in the 2016 budget, worth P3 trillion, on a presidential election year.

Abad also said that government can declare savings anytime in the year, similar to the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), which authorized the executive to withdraw and realign savings midyear.

"There are allocations for districts depending on their needs and the DPWH [Department of Public Works and Highways] and other agencies in the infrastructure provision. DOTC [Department of Transportation and Communications] and DA [Department of Agriculture] have allocated infrastructure projects in every district in every province in every region. But let me emphasize, there's the President's budget message that the focus of the 2016 budget is the 44 priority provinces," said Abad.

Abad, however, claimed there is no more pork barrel.

"There is no more pork [barrel] in this budget. The SC [Supreme Court] has prohibited the creation of the lump sums that after the budget is enacted, legislators then proceed to determine where those lump sums go. People have been saying the legislators are free to introduce projects in the budget? Of course, that's one of the key functions of Congress, therefore they have every right to introduce projects even change projects in the GAA [General Appropriations Act] which they find to be necessary," he explained.

The budget secretary admitted that there are still other lump sums in the budget. However, only three really cannot be disaggregated now--the Calamity Fund, the Contingent Fund, and the Allocations to Local Government Units (ALGUs).

The Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (DRRM) fund is worth P38.9 billion while the Contingent Fund is P4 billion. The ALGU amount has yet to be determined.

Abad said savings can be declared anytime from discontinuance or termination of a project.

"Depends on where the savings is generated. Personnel services, if for example, you're supposed to hire teachers in March but by April you still haven't hired the number. Money spent in March can be declared as savings the following month because clearly, you won't be able to use that appropriation," he said.

The budget of the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program next year is P62.537 billion from P62.23 billion in 2015.

For the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), the government subsidy next year is going to total P29.4 billion.

For Bottom-up Budgeting (BUB), the budget for 2016 is P24.7 billion for 1,500 cities and municipalities.

Abad allayed fears that the 2016 budget can be used for campaigning in the elections, citing the election ban on spending during the campaign and the limited time when the budget takes effect in January 2016.

BIGGEST BUDGET EVER PROPOSED

A day after delivering his final State of the Nation Address (SONA), President Aquino submitted his proposed P3.002 trillion national budget proposal to Congress--the biggest national budget ever proposed--for the year 2016, an election year.

Representing the executive, Abad submitted the 2016 National Expenditure Program to House Speaker Sonny Belmonte at the Batasang Pambansa.

"Considering that we have been discussing this until a couple of weeks ago, I have to congratulate the budget secretary for his printing press. We have it here. The fact that Secretary Abad, whom I will ask to give us an overview of the budget, has given it early doesn't mean we will act on it early. We also intend to scrutinize it carefully and do our proper job on acting on the 2016 budget," said Belmonte.

House Appropriations Committee chairman Isidro Ungab, meanwhile, said, "We will try to finish it on time. The timetable is we're having to have first, briefings, and deliberation by August 10.

Abad said the President himself and the Cabinet went through the budget, and "it took a while for us to put it together."

"This budget is almost 95 percent higher than the budget we submitted in 2010. This has been possible because of improvements in tax administration as well as adept management of our liability with the help of Congress to diminish the leakages and inefficiencies coming from bottlenecks without raising new taxes except for sin tax reform," said Abad.

"We hope the budget passes through with the priorities of the President intact. As we've always said, in the last five years, we've managed to keep the focus of the budget," he added.

BIGGEST ALLOCATIONS

The amount is double the Aquino administration’s P1.541-trillion budget in 2010. It is also 15.2 percent higher than the P2.606-trillion 2015 national budget.

Personnel Services will continue to corner the largest share of this budget with 27.6 percent, followed by Infrastructure and other Capital Outlays with 21.8 percent. Meanwhile, Maintenance and Other Operating Expenditures (MOOE) will have a share of 17.1 percent.

A quarter of the proposed budget--almost 28 percent or P837.9 billion--will be shared between the Departments of Education (DepEd) and Public Works and Highways (DPWH). The DepEd will receive a budget of P436.5 billion, while the DPWH will receive P401.4 billion, an increase of 15.6 percent and 32 percent, respectively.

The proposed budget also has fiscal space amounting to P580.9 billion, which will be allocated for new programs or projects and the expansion of existing projects for 2016. This is double the fiscal space in the 2015 National Budget of P287.3 billion.
Among all the agencies in the Executive Department, the DPWH and Department of Health (DOH) received the highest increases in their annual budgets at 32 percent and 25.2 percent, respectively, as part of efforts to boost public infrastructure development and support economic expansion as well as to improve health care services, especially to the poor.

According to the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), the social services sector will have the biggest budget allocation of P1.1059 trillion, which is 36.8 percent of the proposed budget. Covering education, healthcare, housing, and social welfare and employment, this allocation received a 16.1-percent expansion from the 2015 allocation of P952.7 billion. The proposed allocation also supports the implementation of the DepEd's K-12 program, as well as housing programs and health care projects for poor Filipinos.

Economic services took the second largest budget allocation with P829.6 billion—27.64 percent of the proposed budget, which had increased by 17.3 percent from its 2015 allocation of 27.13 percent. Transport and communications infrastructure will get the bulk of the budget and bring expenditures to infrastructure to 5 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). As such, the DPWH will receive P391.2 billion to enable the agency to complete the pavement of all national arterial and secondary roads.

Defense received P129.1 billion, which increased by 11.5 percent as compared to last year’s allocation. This allocation will fund the continued modernization of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) amid the maritime disputes in the West Philippine Sea.
Aside from this, the President also pushed for the Freedom of Information law in his budget call.

"To ensure the permanency of transparency policies, we urge Congress to pass the Freedom of Information Act," he said.

This article is from: ABS-CBN, RG Bruz, 

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/business/07/28/15/p3-t-budget-2016-submitted-congress, Date Accesses: July 29, 2015