Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. gives a speech at the Department of Nationa Defense headquarters after OIC Carlito Galvez Jr turned over the post on Wednesday, June 7, 2023. (Photo by GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE / Philippine Daily Inquirer)
MANILA, Philippines — The Department of National Defense (DND) should have its own capital outlay to build up its managerial capability, Defense Gilberto “Gibo” Teodoro said on Wednesday.
“We cannot continue to have a Department of National Defense without a capital outlay for our own department,” Teodoro said in his press briefing at the DND headquarters in Quezon City.
Capital outlay refers to the funds that can be used to acquire or maintain fixed assets such as land, buildings, and equipment.
This, Teodoro said, would be necessary due to the limitations on infrastructure and manpower that the DND faces.
“As you can see, our office is very small. We only have a few employees here — only four hundred. The number of stakeholders that we are managing here is close to a million… The manager-to-client ratio is too big. As a manager, my first job is to manage the whole institution itself, I want to help to lay the foundation for the Department of National Defense,” Teodoro said in a mix of Filipino and English.
Pension system
Teodoro also vowed to work with former Defense officer-in-charge Carlito Galvez Jr. and Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno to find a sustainable scheme for the pension scheme of military and uniformed personnel (MUP).
“Now the initial job actually is to minimize as much as possible the hemorrhage immediately. A self-sustaining pension scheme needs time. We need to build up the funds and we will need to raise sources in order to find sources in order to raise capital for the fund,” Teodoro said.
Fully funded by the government, the current MUP pension system covers retirees from the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the Philippine National Police, the Philippine Coast Guard, the Philippine Public Safety College, the Bureaus of Jail Management and Penology, the Bureau of Fire Protection, and the Bureau of Corrections.
On Friday last week, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. warned that the MUP pension fund would be depleted in five to six years unless the government could find ways to make the pension system “self-sustaining.”