Senate to pass 2012 budget by December, says Drilon
MANILA, Philippines — Senator Franklin Drilon, chairman of the Senate finance committee, on Monday vowed to pass in December this year the proposed P1.8 trillion budget for 2012 whether or not the lawmakers’ “pork barrel” is released on time.
Drilon’s statement was an apparent dig at opposition members of the House of Representatives, who have threatened to boycott the budget deliberations. The boycott was prompted by the government’s alleged failure to release the House minority’s priority development funds known as “pork barrel.”
“The President submitted the budget 30 days before the constitutionally mandated deadline. We can do no less. Our commitment: We will pass the 2012 national budget by December this year,” Drilon said at the start of his committee’s deliberations of the 2012 national budget.
“To pass the budget on time– not whether or not our pork barrel is released on time– is our solemn duty as elective representatives of the people,” he added.
But Drilon questioned first the members of the Development Budget Coordinating Committee present in the hearing about the implications of the Standards and Poor’s downgrade in the credit rating of the United States from triple A to AA+ to the proposed 2012 budget as well the country’s GDP growth projections for the rest of the year and the following year.
The senator also noted an “alarming 17.2 percent contraction in government financial consumption expenditure for the first quarter of the year compared with the same period last year.
“In fact, the National Statistics Coordinating Board tells us that under spending by the government, along with the slowdown in global trade, constricted the economy to a lower growth of 4.9 percent in the first quarter of 2011, compared with a much higher 8.4 percent growth in the first quarter of 2010,” he said.
“The fact that data from the Department of Public Works and Highways reveal that the DPWH lump sum had not been released as April 2012 lends credence to allegations that the slack in the government spending pulled down our economic growth in the early part of the current year,” he pointed out.
Drilon also questioned the impact of the P17.2 billion government deficit from January to June this year vis-a-vis the P300 billion deficit target for 2011.
