2017 nat’l budget pork-free, says Alvarez

Incoming Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE

INCOMING Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez said the proposed P3.3-trillion budget for 2017 would be free of pork barrel contrary to claims that lump-sum fund allocations would be revived under the Duterte administration.

“The Duterte administration has a strong anticorruption program. Woe to the lawmaker who will propose a project with the end in view of making money out of it in the manner it was done in the past through under-the-table commissions from implementors,” Alvarez said.

The Davao del Norte lawmaker pointed out that the 2017 budget would be done on a line-item system rather than lump-sum allocations that were the bane of past budgets riddled with pork barrel funds.

Although lawmakers would each be given an P80-million cap on projects they would want implemented in their districts, Alvarez said this would be made in detail and full transparency at budget hearings instead of lump-sum appropriations.

The P80 million will be divided between infrastructure projects, such as roads, bridges, school buildings and non-infrastructure expenditures, such as medicines.

No intervention

Alvarez said he would not allow intervention from representatives after the budget had been approved.

“I never said that members of the House of Representatives ‘will be entitled to their usual district allocations.’ The Supreme Court has already ruled against such lump-sum allocations,” he said.

The Supreme Court declared the graft-ridden Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) unconstitutional in November 2013. Its ruling came four months after the Inquirer broke the story that P10 billion in allocations from the PDAF meant to ease rural poverty had gone to ghost projects and massive kickbacks.

Alvarez said it was inevitable that representatives would inject their projects in the budget because it was their prerogative to lobby for their district’s interest.

“The people go directly to us to tell us what projects are badly needed by their communities,” he said.

But there will be no pork barrel or lump-sum allocations for members of Congress, Alvarez said.

“What I said was that congressmen will be allowed to propose projects needed in their districts so they can be included in the line budgeting of the General Appropriations Act (GAA),” he said.

Alvarez said the function of identifying priority projects was inherent in being members of the House of Representatives

“This is the reason why the framers of our Constitution made sure that budget-setting starts at the House,” he said. “We congressmen are at ground zero, so to speak.”