Budget won’t be used for polls
Budget Secretary Florencio Abad assuaged fears Wednesday that the proposed P3.002-trillion national budget for next year, expected to be passed by the Senate today, was designed to help the administration candidates in next year’s elections.
According to Abad, the budget may not even be implemented in the first three months of 2016 because of the election ban that starts next March 25.
Abad, who attended the marathon interpellation of the budget at the Senate Wednesday, said the government was glad that the Senate was bent on passing the budget measure today as scheduled.
“We’re very happy because this is our sixth budget and for the sixth straight year we submitted it early and there’s a good chance that once again it will be signed before the year ends which is really good for the economy as well as for the execution of the budget,” he told reporters during a break.
The speedy approval of the budget measure was because the executive branch had explained to the legislators that the proposed 2016 budget was “really a very disaggregated budget unlike before when there were lump sums that were the cause of many inquiries,” Abad said.
Told that Sen. Francis Escudero intended to insert a provision in the budget measure that would ensure that funds would not be used for electioneering purposes, Abad made it clear the budget was “not designed for elections.”
“In fact, the election ban starts March 25 so a greater part of the budget may not be executed in the first three months because of the ban,” he said.
“There’s really no room for using [the budget] for election purposes because it has been presented in detail so there is no flexibility or discretion involved,” Abad said.
However, the election ban does not cover emergency projects like the rehabilitation of communities affected by Supertyphoon “Yolanda” and public-private partnership projects, he said.
Abad said his office had instructed all government agencies like the Department of Public Works and Highways to disaggregate their budgets and have their projects bid out so the process of awarding and issuing notices for them would begin in January.
