Senators nix toll rate hike, chide President Aquino men
Why ask for more money when the government has plenty to spare?
Senators on Tuesday confronted Aquino administration officials over government attempts to increase toll rates, mass transit fares and service fees at various state agencies.
At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Senators Manuel Villar and Ralph Recto questioned the wisdom of increasing the fares at the Light Rail Transit (LRT) and Metro Rail Transit (MRT) systems, considering that the administration had apparently not been spending enough in the past year.
“There is no compelling reason (to increase fares and service fees)…We’re not even spending our existing budget,” said Recto.
“Our problem is under-spending,” Villar told the government officials present, including Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Cayetano Paderanga Jr.
“If underspending is the problem, why increase prices? Why would we burden the people if we’re not spending the money that we have now?” he said.
Senators were told that the anticipated increase in LRT and MRT fares would raise around P2 billion in additional revenues.
But Villar noted that as of June 2011 alone, the government was already able to generate P9.2 billion in service fees.
The administration had been apparently slow in spending the budget for 2011, a key reason why the economy has slowed down, experts have noted.
Slow PPP program
Credit Suisse, the financial services company, earlier downgraded its full-year economic growth forecast for the Philippines from 4.6 percent to 4.3 percent, partly because of the slow implementation of the public-private partnership program (PPP), the Aquino administration’s flagship program to finance infrastructure and development projects.
“The real issue today is the government is not even spending its budget,” said Recto, a former economic planning secretary who formerly headed the National Economic and Development Authority.
Sen. Gregorio Honasan also questioned the timing of the planned increases: “Do we need to do this now and burden our tax-paying citizenry some more?”
Villar said he did not see the need to increase the toll, mass transit fares and service fees at this time, and suggested that it could be done at a later date.
Free fees
“If fact, the practice of government offices charging fees is questionable because when you pay taxes, you expect to be given services in return. You don’t expect to be charged with fees, yet these fees are even being increased,” he said.
Villar said the service fees referred to include those being collected by the Land Transportation Office, Land Registration Authority, National Statistics Office, the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Land Transportation and Franchising Regulatory Board and the National Bureau of Investigation.
