Senator calls for breaking up of lump sum provisions in 2015 budget

Senator Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara. INQUIRER.net FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—After Monday’s demonstrations, a senator suggested that lump sum items in the proposed P2.606-trillion budget for 2015 be broken up to keep them from being dangled as pork barrel.

Protesters said that President Aquino continued to enjoy huge discretionary funds, including the P500-billion Special Purpose Fund, and that Congress could still decide beneficiaries of funds, as in the past.

“As a rule, it’s probably better to disaggregate as many lump sums as we can. Then they are less prone to patronage and corruption,’’ Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara, chair of the ways and means committee, said in a text message.

Pending the start of Senate deliberations on the National Expenditure Program this week, Angara could not say yet which lump sum items should be disaggregated.

Budget Secretary Florencio Abad Jr. had said that P501.670 billion in the 2015 budget was to be set aside as Special Purpose Funds, budgetary allocations for specific purposes, such as calamity funds, contingency funds, miscellaneous personnel benefit funds, pension and guarantee funds, the Internal Revenue Allotment, debt service or interest payments, among others.

Senate President Franklin Drilon had expressed openness to suggestions to disaggregate lump- sum appropriations in the national budget.

“Under the principle of transparency in the national budget, we are willing to listen. Let us be realistic, though, with the level of how much we can disaggregate,’’ Drilon said.

Drilon said Congress was willing to disaggregate even the calamity fund as long as the public could predict how many cyclones would hit the archipelago next year.

He recalled that in 2013, Congress scrambled to pass a P14.6-billion supplemental budget to rehabilitate disaster-stricken areas this year because the calamity fund was insufficient.

“The nature of these funds is that it is extremely difficult to predict when and how much will be used, or how much will be needed. Yes, these can be subject to abuse – they were abused by previous administrations. We are willing to listen as to how to disaggregate this,’’ he said.

After the so-called abolition of the priority development assistance fund, Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares said that Congress continued the practice of giving lawmakers discretion over funds through a discreet referral and recommendation system.

Angara also proposed that the Department of Budget and Management keep the budget process transparent until the last centavo is spent.

“We cannot have a system in which the budget bill is debated in the open, in plenary, only to have it adjusted behind closed doors,’’ he said.

Angara also said that standards should be set in disbursing savings based on “need, urgency, an agency’s capacity to utilize it,” among others.

“While the use of savings is largely discretionary on the part of executive leaders, it will help if some standards are to be followed,’’ he added.

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