‘Errata’ reinserted in national budget bill

By: DJ Yap - 10 years ago

The House of Representatives is poised to approve this week the 2015 national budget that will include the last-minute changes introduced by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), such as “realignments within department or agency budgets.”

Appropriations committee chair Isidro Ungab admitted late Friday that the DBM had resubmitted 100 pages of “errata” to the proposed P2.606-trillion 2015 expenditure program that it had withdrawn last month after the chamber passed the proposed budget on second reading.

Ungab said the DBM again filed the proposed changes with the small committee that was formed during the plenary to deliberate on the amendments of individual representatives.

“The amendments previously submitted [on] the last day of plenary consideration of the budget were withdrawn by the DBM but were resubmitted during the small committee deliberation on the amendments,” he said.

But Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares has threatened to derail the passage of the budget, arguing that the House never deliberated on the “errata” or proposed changes submitted by the DBM.

“How can we pass this budget when the errata has not been shown, let alone deliberated by Congress?” he said.

Philippine Congress. AP FILE PHOTO

“We have received reports that the errata are not mere typographical errors but very substantive and in line with Malacañang’s plan to change the meaning of savings to legalize DAP [Disbursement Acceleration Program],” he said.

“We will do all we can to stop this underhanded move even if we reach the Supreme Court,” Colmenares said.

In voiding the DAP, the Supreme Court ruled that savings and standby appropriations may be declared only at the end of the fiscal year. But the DBM redefined savings in the proposed 2015 budget law, so that savings from discontinued projects may be declared even before the end of the year.

‘Various projects’

Among the salient points in the DBM’s package of amendments is the separation into component parts of the projects under the Grassroots Participatory Budgeting Program (GPBP), many of which had been previously listed only as “various projects” as the local governments had yet to identify the particular items to prioritize under the program, Ungab explained.

This was done in order for the budget law to “fully comply with the law, the Constitution and recent [Supreme Court] rulings on the matter,” he said.

“There are also realignments within the department or agency budgets,” as well as “some proposed increases like the Apec [Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit] etc., which the committee carefully scrutinized and reconsidered,” he said.

Asked if he would consider the changes substantive, Ungab said the amendments had been carefully pored over by the committee, and that such changes were mostly in response to questions raised during the committee and plenary deliberations on the budget proposal.

“We must understand that these amendments such as realignments were fully dealt with and scrutinized not only during the committee but also during the plenary deliberations, as most of the realignments are also offshoots of the questions raised during the committee and plenary deliberations,” he said.