Abad defends budget against Senator Santiago attack

Budget Secretary Florencio Abad. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE

MANILA, Philippines—Budget Secretary Florencio Abad has dismissed claims the P2.6-trillion 2015 budget was the administration’s “preparatory budget” for the 2016 elections.

“We have our budget priority framework, and we have sectoral and geographic focus. How can that be?” he said in an interview.

Abad insisted that the proposed General Appropriations Act of 2015 was a “rational budget” designed to reduce poverty, grow the economy and promote governance.

This has been the principle behind the annual budgets the Aquino administration has been submitting to Congress since 2011, he said.

Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago had claimed that the 2015 budget was designed in such a way that more money was allotted to President Aquino’s allies and government departments that were “viewed as crucial to the end results of the elections.”

Misappropriated item

For instance, she said, in the P104.5-billion budget of the Department of Interior and Local Government, there is an item for a water service, a function that belongs to the National Irrigation Administration.

Liberal Party secretary general Senen Sarmiento has explained that funding for water services was in no way related to irrigation.

The Salintubig project is designed to improve health sanitation and provide water to rural communities in accordance with the Millennium Development Goals, he explained.

In a recent privilege speech, Santiago claimed that the 2015 budget contained some P37.3-billion in pork barrel-like funds. Further, she said, it gave the administration a loophole whereby any budget item could be declared as savings at any time.

House and Senate members of the bicameral conference committee met last week to reconcile their versions of the budget measure, including redefining savings, to address concerns like Santiago’s.

Savings defined

The lawmakers agreed on a definition of savings that would allow a government agency to declare and use them only after satisfying certain conditions, and if the savings did not result from the agency’s fault or negligence.

They said this complied with the Supreme Court ruling declaring unconstitutional some parts of Malacañang’s Disbursement Acceleration Program, ostensibly a stimulus economic program to accelerate government spending but which the high court deemed as encroaching on the Congress’ “power of the purse.”

The panel is set to meet again on Monday to approve the reconciled version.

“The staff are still ironing out the conflicting amounts and provisions,” said Sen. Francis Escudero, the chair of the Senate bicam panel and finance committee.

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