Aquino vetoes 2 provisions of national budget

By: Michael Lim Ubac - 11 years ago

President Benigno Aquino III. AP FILE PHOTO/Malacanang Photo Bureau, Robert Vinas

President Benigno Aquino III on Friday vetoed two provisions of the General Appropriations Act (GAA) of 2014, otherwise known as Republic Act No. 10633.

In his message to both houses of Congress, Mr. Aquino said he had directly vetoed two provisions.

First, the Department of Public Works and Highways’ Office of the Secretary (Osec) Special Provision No. 25 that allows the agency to use income, derived from laboratory and testing fees and subsoil exploration activities, for the repair, maintenance and procurement of research, materials and subsoil exploration equipment.

Without a separate substantive law authorizing this, the President said that this contravened Sec. 44, Chapter 5, Book 6 of Executive Order No. 292 (Administrative Code of 1987), “which mandates that all incomes of agencies should accrue to the general fund and deposited in the National Treasury or in a duly authorized depository bank, unless otherwise authorized by law.”

“The court has said time and again that the general appropriations bill cannot include matters that should be properly included in a separate legislation,” the President said.

“Moreover, all income of agencies already constitute an integral part of the revenue and financing sources of the national government for the year, which is the basis of the general appropriations bill. Consequently, the insertion of this new use of income special provision will result in double programming of said income and reduce the financing sources of this year’s GAA,” he said.

Second, the President vetoed Special Provision No. 5 of the Unprogrammed Fund that would benefit the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

“The SEC is already authorized to retain income but only up to P100 million, pursuant to Section 75 of RA 8799 (Securities Regulation Act). Legally, it should not therefore be allowed to indirectly use income beyond the amount authorized by law through the Department of Finance-SEC Special Provision No. 2 on the ‘Use of Excess Income’ (page 391 of the budget),” he said.

As a matter of “sound budgeting policies,” agencies already authorized by law to use income should no longer be authorized to use excess income under Special Provision No. 5 of the Unprogrammed Fund.

Conditional implementation

Mr. Aquino also placed “under conditional implementation” the following revisions made by Congress during its budgetary deliberations:

Under General Provisions, Section 59, “Availability of Appropriations,” which provides for a two-year validity of appropriations for maintenance and other operating expenses.

Use of income (Department of Environment and Natural Resources Osec Special Provision No. 1, “Integrated Protected Fund;” Department of Health’s Special Provision No. 2, “Hospital Income”).

Shared service facilities (Department of Trade and Industry’s Osec Special Provision No. 1, “Implementation of Shared Service Facilities,” which the President said should be “subject to guidelines to be jointly issued by the DTI and Department of Budget and Management”).

Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Program Special Provision No. 1, “Release and Use of Fund.”

Local government unit (LGU) share from tobacco excise taxes (Special Provision No. 3, “Use, Allocation and Release of LGU share in Excise Taxes from Locally Manufactured Virginia-type Cigarettes”).

The President said that in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling, which “decreed that any form of post-enactment authority in the implementation of the budget is unconstitutional, the provision of said circular in legislative consultation in the allocation of the shares of cities and municipalities of congressional districts of a beneficiary province is no longer operative.”