DILG dangles P6B for good governance

Interior Secretary Jesse M. Robredo. INQUIRER file photo

The Department of Interior and Local Government is dangling P6 billion for local government units (LGUs) to do what they are supposed to—practice good governance.

Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo said the incentive wasn’t meant to replace some P13 billion that many local governments would lose as internal revenue allotment (IRA) shares were expected to decline by 4.8 percent as a result of lower national revenues in 2009 and 2010.

It also wasn’t meant to temper a campaign by LGUs to recover some P500 billion in IRA that local executives said were not remitted to local governments for 19 years, he said.

The incentive, Robredo said, was already existing “long before this hullabaloo on unreleased IRA of previous administrations.”

Reports said Malacañang dangled the incentive as Bataan Gov. Enrique Garcia prepared to seek declaratory relief from courts to prompt the national government to release P500 billion in supposedly unremitted shares to LGUs since 1992.

Angeles City Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan, a member of the executive board of the League of Cities of the Philippines, said he does not believe that the P6 billion is intended for other outlays other than its original purpose.

“The fund] isn’t easily [accessible to local governments]. LGUs should be qualified first,” Pamintuan said here on Wednesday.

Garcia did not reply when asked about the status of his campaign. Earlier, he sought the inclusion of the amount in the General Appropriations Act (GAA) of 2012.

The House committee on ways and means, chaired by Batangas Rep. Hermilando Mandanas, has approved a bill that sought to pay the IRA shortfall in the 2012 budget.

Garcia said the P500-billion shortfall is 174 percent more than the total amount of IRA in 2011.

The Constitution grants local governments a 40 percent share from national taxes. The allotments are given to provinces and cities (each gets 23 percent), towns (34 percent) and barangays (20 percent).

The Local Government Code of 1991 (Republic Act No. 7160) set the shares based on population (50 percent), land area (25 percent) and equal sharing (25 percent).

Garcia traced the IRA shortfall to the deductions made from gross internal revenue collections, which are not provided by law.

Another reason given for the shortfall was the fact that the Bureau of Customs did not add excise taxes and value added taxes on imported goods to the gross internal revenue collections from which the 40 percent IRA is based.