President Aquino getting bigger intel fund in 2012

Malacañang got a P200 million boost in the President’s intelligence fund while the judiciary and several government agencies lost their intel funds in the proposed P1.8-trillion national budget for next year.

The President’s allocation was increased from P400 million to P600 million. In all, the total government intelligence fund was increased from P1.14 billion to P1.32 billion.

The following agencies, however, would no longer receive intelligence funds—Office of the Solicitor General, National Security Council, National Telecommunications Commission, Commission on Elections and Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process.

Judiciary also loses intel funds

The judiciary, a coequal branch of government composed of the courts and attached agencies, also lost its intel funds.

Sen. Franklin Drilon, Senate finance committee chair, said the rationale for the strict allocation of intelligence funds was to “limit it to those involved in intelligence gathering.”

He said the intelligence fund of the Armed Forces of the Philippines was raised from P124.4 million to P136.3 million, while the budget for the Witness Protection Program was increased from P166.4 million to P172.9 million.

Next year’s national budget features a new item called “miscellaneous personnel benefit fund” into which some P23 billion in unspent salaries for unfilled positions would be placed to prevent rampant “fund conversion.”

Actual hiring should be done

Under the new approach, Drilon, whose committee is conducting hearings on the national budget, said an agency could not use the money unless “actual hiring is done.”

“The practice of converting this budget to savings and then converting it to other items in the budget would no longer be possible,” he told reporters, noting that undisbursed salary allocations had been the source of fund conversions in agencies such as the military.

The P23-billion fund was based on allocations for 66,957 positions in the bureaucracy that remained unfilled—although funded—as of this year.

“This is a source of conversion not only in the military but in other agencies,” Drilon said.