President Aquino orders 35% cost-cutting on supplies, travel, phone use
Aiming to save 35 percent from government expenditures, the Aquino administration has ordered a cost-cutting in the purchase of office supplies, airline tickets, and the use of mobile phones and Internet connections.
In a meeting Monday, President Benigno Aquino III ordered his economic managers to implement cost-saving measures and generate savings to fund infrastructure and social service programs, Budget Secretary Florencio Abad and presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said separately on Tuesday.
“One of the directives was to look into bulk purchases of airline tickets, hotel accommodations, telephone and Internet subscriptions,” Abad told reporters on the sidelines of a government television program on President Aquino’s State of the Nation Address next week.
Abad said Transportation Secretary Mar Roxas would look into airline bulk purchases while Trade Secretary Gregory Domingo would deal with telephone and Internet subscriptions.
Abad said Mr. Aquino gave the directive because he wanted his economic managers to find “how to bring down the government’s overhead so we can put the savings in capital outlays.”
Aside from bulk purchases, Abad said all agencies would now be required to do their purchasing from the government procurement service because “on average, you save 35 percent if you buy from our procurement.”
Energy saving
“The total expenditure of government on common-use supplies like bond paper, pencils, ball pens, ink is about P19.5 billion. If all that P19.5 billion is bought from the procurement service, we multiply that by 35 percent and that’s more than P6 billion,” Abad said.
The government also wants to engage energy-saving companies. “There is huge money to be saved from introducing energy efficiency measures,” Abad said.
He said the government could save P8 billion in three years if it adopted an open-source technology rather than paying for licenses for the software it uses.
