Senate kicks off budget debate
Senator Franklin Drilon INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
The Senate on Tuesday began marathon plenary deliberations on the proposed P1.8-trillion budget for 2012, aiming at getting the measure passed and ready for President Benigno Aquino III’s signature by the end of the year.
The finance committee headed by Senator Franklin Drilon has rejected the House version of the measure which increased the Department of Justice’s budget by P200 million for its Justice System Infrastructure Program (Jusip), and another P100 million for its building.
The senator also recommended that another P33 million be slashed from the justice department’s budget for the National Justice Information System (NJIS).
Drilon, a former justice secretary, argued that the National Bureau of Investigation was already doing the NJIS’ work and that the creation of the Office for Cybercrime to implement the program had “no enabling statute.”
Like the House, the Drilon committee did not give up on the controversial miscellaneous personnel benefits fund (MPBF) without a fight.
The P101-billion MPBF, introduced by Malacañang in the 2012 budget proposal, lumps together unspent appropriations for unfilled positions throughout the bureaucracy, including constitutional offices like the Supreme Court. It is to be controlled by the President.
The ostensible purpose of the MPBF is to end the practice of some agencies to ask for higher staffing allocations and then hiring only a few employees and then diverting the funds to bonuses and other expenses.
The MPBF has been opposed by various constitutional agencies, particularly the Supreme Court, whose 2012 budget of P14.3 billion for the judiciary was reduced to P13.4 billion after Malacañang took P2 billion and transferred it to the MPBF.
Judiciary employees staged protest actions against the Malacañang move, supporting the constitutional agencies’ position that it went against their “constitutionally guaranteed fiscal autonomy.”
Drilon backed the House decision to take away P5 billion from the MPBF, which has been described as a “pork barrel” allocation.
The Senate committee agreed with the special provision in the House version, which would require unspent budgets for salaries to be returned to the National Treasury at the end of the fiscal year. Agencies would also have to submit to the Office of the President and Congress “a report on the utilization of funds on a quarterly basis.”
Drilon said his committee included a “slight amendment,” which would allow savings from the salary budgets of the judiciary and other constitutional offices to be spent “for the construction of the Manila Hall of Justice.”
He said the amount would also be used for “the maintenance of other halls of justice in the country, and the buildings housing the Sandiganbayan, Court of Tax Appeals and the Court of Appeals, Civil Service Commission, Commission on Audit, Commission on Elections, and the Ombudsman.”
Describing the proposed 2012 budget as “results-focused,” Drilon outlined the steps taken in the budget process in support of Mr. Aquino’s program for “transparent governance,” poverty alleviation, economic growth, a just and lasting peace, and climate change adaptation and mitigation.
