MANILA, Philippines ? The missing P711 billion in automatic and continuing appropriations from the proposed P1.645 trillion budget for 2011 had the minority bloc in the House of Representatives raising a howl over what it said was the Aquino administration?s attempt to ?demean Congress.?
At the start of deliberations on the proposed budget Wednesday, Minority leader and Albay Representative Edcel Lagman riled against the omission of the amount in the National Expenditure Program (NEP) submitted to Congress.
?It?s obvious, they wanted to demean the power of Congress to go oversee these expenditures,? Lagman told reporters in a news conference, adding that this was impliedly admitted by Budget officials during the hearing.
?That should not be the case,? he added.
The P711.5 billion represents interest payment of national government debts and the Internal Revenue Allocations (IRA) of local government units, which are among the items under automatic and continuing appropriations.
In his presentation, Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said the amount was not submitted as part of the NEP because ?automatically appropriated items have already been given continuing authority.?
Abad said this prevented a repeat of what happened in the 2010 budget ?where Congress adjusted downwards the interest rate assumption to save P64.6 billion for interest payments, and transferred the same to the general appropriations for Congressional initiatives.?
This was, however, vetoed by then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and was reverted back to debt payments.
The NEP submitted to Congress contained only new appropriations amounting to P933.5 billion. Abad called the proposed budget the ?reform budget? of 2011, intended to ?institute good governance in fiscal affairs? and to be transparent and accountable to the people.
Gabriela partylist Representative Luz Ilagan, meanwhile, said that with the increased allocation for debt servicing, there is no reform in the 2011 budget.
?A budget that proposes increased allocations for debt servicing and military and police expenditure while ignoring the needs of a people battered by crisis is not at all a reform budget,? she said in a statement.
Debt service and interest payments in the proposed budget will eat up P357 billion.
Ilagan noted that the amount appropriated for debt service for next year?s budget represents an increase of P80.9 billion, bigger than the overall budget of many government agencies.
?The P80.9 billion increase in interest payments is almost scandalous, especially when you realize that the budget for health services actually went down from P40 billion to P38.6 billion,? said Ilagan.
She said the Aquino administration proposed to allocate only 2.3 percent of the national budget to health at a time when the country was lagging behind international health standards set by the World Health organization.
?To date it is estimated that every two hours a woman dies due to child birth complications and seven out of ten Filipinos die without getting any medical attention. The decrease in the budgetary allocation for health services is a tragedy,? she added.
