MANILA, Philippines — All projects funded through fees collected from vehicle registration must be specified in the 2020 national budget in accordance with the Road Board abolition law, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said Friday.
According to Recto, the proposed 2020 national budget is now required to identify all projects funded by Motor Vehicle User’s Charge (MVUC) collections since the Road Board has already been eliminated.
“This is the very important sunshine provision in the law abolishing the Road Board. It means that projects funded by MVUC must be itemized and presented, in the interest of transparency, as MVUC-funded projects,” Recto said in a statement.
“That’s the way to do it. Full disclosure. So that vehicle owners will know where the registration fees they have paid will go,” he added.
Recto noted that if MVUC-funded projects have not been specified in the 2020 budget proposal apart from other items of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), then “the intent of making them distinct and separate is disobeyed.”
“Kailangan under one box talaga, para alam ng taxpayers kung magkano ang nakolekta, saan gagastusin, at kung ang mga ito ay ayon sa menu na isinasaad sa RA 11239,” he explained.
“If this will not be done, then we will be going back to the old system of treating MVUC collections as off-budget expenditures. Kung hindi deklarado, nakatago at naka-lump sum lang, eh di parang bumalik tayo sa lumang gawain,” he also pointed out.
President Rodrigo Duterte officially abolished the Road Board upon enacting Republic Act (RA) 11239 last March. Under the law, all MVUCs shall be remitted to the National Treasury and placed in a special account in the General Fund.
READ: Duterte officially abolishes Road Board
Fund under that special account will be earmarked solely for “the construction, upgrading, repair, and rehabilitation of roads, bridges, and road drainage to be included in the annual GAA,” the law also states.
The Department of Budget and Management said the proposed 2020 national budget is at P4.1 trillion. But it has decided to hold off its submission on July 22, as the 18th Congress has yet to elect a new Speaker of the House of Representatives and Senate President.
READ: DBM awaits new Speaker before submitting 2020 proposed nat’l budget
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