ARMM budget for 2012 needs close scrutiny—Senator Drilon

MANILA, Philippines—The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao’s 2012 budget needs to be reviewed closely and conditions must be imposed upon its release, a senator said Monday.

Senator Franklin Drilon, chairman of the Senate committee of finance, said after the proposed budget hearing for the ARMM, that the proposed budget for ARMM next year is P12.468 billion, the biggest in the region’s history. This year’s budget is P11.8 billion, he said.

Drilon said that besides general appropriations fund, the ARMM will also get additional money from such national agencies as the Departments of Public Works and Highways and of Agriculture, which will amount to a total of some P11.5 billion. It will also get an internal revenue allotment of P14.2 billion, the Priority Development Assistance Fund for legislators worth P560 million, or a total of about P38.75 billion, including the money from the national budget.

Drilon said that when the ARMM started in 1991, it only had a budget of P792.8 million. The ARMM, he said, has received from the General Appropriations Act  a total of about P123.6 billion in the past 20 years.

But despite the “large sums of money,” the ARMM has remained the “poorest” in the country, Drilon noted.

He also cited a “mind-boggling” Commission on Audit (CoA) report from January 2008 to 2009 under the leadership of the Ampatuan clan.

He questioned what the CoA claimed were “spurious” cash advances of hundreds of millions of pesos that could not be accounted from the P1.468 billion budget for the Department of Public Works and Highways.

Also, payments amounting to P1.123 billion to 112 suppliers and contractors were not supported by documents, Drilon said, citing the CoA report.

He said that the general rule that payments must be made by check was disregarded.

Drilon added that transactions amounting to P865.887 million could be considered “fictitious” according to CoA as these were denied by suppliers or supported with “spurious” documents.

Drilon cited as example procurements of fuel from the Cotabato Shell Service Station and Shariff Aguak Petron station amounting to P28.241 million for the use of various offices that the CoA report said were “fictitious.”

The manager of Cotabato Shell Service station and Shariff Aguak Petron station claimed that payments amounting to P5.013 million were not received.

Drilon said that this only showed that ARMM was a “failure” as an “experiment in local autonomy.”

He added that the present leadership was “not capable of instituting reforms” because they have passed on the problem to the Department of Interior and Local Government.

“The need for reforms is really obvious,” said Drilon.

While the budget needs to be scrutinized, it is still up to the leaders of the region, he said.

“At the end of the day, it’s the selection of the correct leaders. We saw a brazen disregard of the rules of the budget … and the brazen tolerance of the Arroyo administration on the Ampatuans,” he said.

Drilon then justified the postponement of the elections in the ARMM, which was supposed to take place last August.

This is the “principal reason” we had to postpone the elections, Drilon explained, as the postponement offers the “opportunity and space” to institute reforms.