The Aquino administration is deferring public spending this year in order to load up the unused funds for deployment closer to the 2013 elections, according to Minority Leader Edcel Lagman.
Lagman noted that Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, who is a top official of the ruling Liberal Party, said capital spending was being reined in this year but that it would pour in early 2012.
“Why is next year so different from this year? If this year the administration pleaded its anti-corruption crusade as the excuse for not spending, are they now saying that the crusade has succeeded so quickly that they can now afford to make a 180-degree policy change by next year already?” he said in a statement.
He wondered if the real significance of 2012 lies in its closeness to the elections of 2013, “when it will profit the administration immensely to buy the affections of voters with a massive flood of project-related spending.”
Brakes on economy
Lagman said the failure to spend on infrastructure projects, ostensibly to keep the budget deficit within limits, has put the brakes on the economy, so much so that the International Monetary Fund has downgraded the growth forecasts for the Philippines because of tepid public spending.
“This kind of irresponsible thinking, which puts the budget and government spending at the service of political expediency, will not be condoned by the opposition,” said Lagman whose minority bloc failed to force any revisions in Malacañang’s proposed budget for 2012 or in this year’s budget, for that matter.
Lagman said the administration’s obsession with the 2013 elections was evident in the programs that it has vigorously pushed in the 2012 budget.
CCT perverted
This includes the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program which was increased by 94 percent this year and is set to increase by 87 percent next year.
According to Lagman, the CCT, which was adopted and expanded from the previous Arroyo administration, should be deferred until the Social Weather Stations has made a study of its impact.
“Until this program has been properly validated against its stated social welfare and behavioral reform objectives, we can only conclude that CCT is indeed being perverted into nothing but a giant dole-out program, to be used for electoral campaign purposes alone,” he said.
He said the administration’s focus on the 2013 elections could also be seen in the zero projects finalized under the private public partnership (PPP) program, supposed to be the centerpiece program of the Aquino administration for which funding requests were made in the first two budgets.
“The last executive director of this program recently resigned, and to date even the requisite implementing rules and regulations (IRR) have not yet been completed. Is this just another example of this administration’s amateurish style of governance, or are there darker campaign-related motives behind the increased funding request for [the] PPP?” asked Lagman.
Keep funds in agencies
To ensure that no unused funds from the 2011 and 2012 budgets will be used to boost the political stock of the LP in the 2013 election campaign, Lagman said that all unused funds should remain with the agencies and for the specific purpose that they were allocated, including the funds for unfilled government positions lumped together in the Miscellaneous Personnel Benefits Fund (MPBF).
These funds should not be used for miscellaneous and other operating expenses or capital spending of these agencies, he said.