Deputy Speaker Ralph Recto (INQUIRER FILE PHOTO)
MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang must disclose the details of its requested P588-billion funding under “unprogrammed” appropriations in the proposed 2023 national budget, an amount more than double what was allotted for this year.
Deputy Speaker Ralph Recto made this call on Saturday, saying such “588 billion shades of gray” must be itemized and rendered “in black and white.” The House of Representatives began deliberations this week on the P5.268-trillion National Expenditure Program (NEP) for next year, with Speaker Martin Romualdez vowing to approve the budget measure before Congress goes on a break in October.
This early, however, several lawmakers are already seeing red flags in the draft budget.
According to Recto, there are 10 items under “unprogrammed fund” and they are some of the biggest lump sums in the 2023 NEP. These items, however, were not included in the computation of the total budget that the executive department wants Congress to approve.
‘Nebulous’
“While it is part of the NEP, the unprogrammed fund is not included in the total amount. The result is, every popular budget literature nowadays quotes a smaller budget level,” Recto said. Thus, the proposed national budget for 2023 is actually P5.856 trillion, or P588 billion more than the reported P5.268 trillion, the Batangas congressman stressed.
Unprogrammed funds are standby appropriations approved by Congress but whose availability depends on whether there will be excess tax collections, new revenue sources, or forthcoming loans in the future.
Among the “unclear and undefined” portions in the NEP under unprogrammed appropriations are items such as “support to foreign assisted projects,” which has a proposed budget of P380.6 billion.
“Equally nebulous” is another item called “support for infrastructure projects and social programs” which asks for P149.7 billion.
“These items leave huge funding footprints, but they are encased in mere one-liner appropriations language. It is a blank-check request,” Recto said.
Lax compliance
As he put it, such appropriations can only be released if these “funding triggers” — more revenues or new loans — are met.
“But the problem is, there seems to be lax compliance on this [provision]. In 2020, for example, when revenue collections were down because of the pandemic, every centavo of the P122 billion in unprogrammed appropriations was [still] released,” Recto said.
This same practice was repeated this year, he said, with every single peso of the P251.6 billion earmarked under the unprogrammed fund supposedly used up.
The representative urged the Department of Budget and Management to begin posting on its website details of its releases from the unprogrammed fund.
Recto clarified that some unprogrammed items in the 2023 NEP were, in his view, “good and beneficial” and worthy of support, such as the P18.9 billion for public health emergency benefits for front-liners, as well as the “meager” P14.6 million for local government unit “arrears.”
Also, the proposed P5-billion funding for the modernization program of the Armed Forces of the Philippines “in principle is good, but in the interest of transparency [it] must be itemized,” he said.
Congress must also scrutinize another unprogrammed item labeled “arrears to the (information technology) provider of the Land Transportation Office,” Recto added.
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