As Malacañang forwarded to Congress the proposed P1.4-trillion national budget for 2009 last Aug. 26, the Confederation for Unity, Recognition and Advancement of Government Employees (Courage) said that Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is really preparing for the elections of 2010, adding that they will guard the P1.41-trillion budget to ensure that it would not be used for the administration’s campaign kitty.
BY NOEL SALES BARCELONA
Bulatlat.com
Vol. VIII, No. 30, August 31-September 6, 2008
As Malacañang forwarded to Congress the proposed P1.4-trillion ($304.88 billion at the Aug. 29 exchange rate of $1:P45.92) national budget for 2009 last Aug. 26, the Confederation for Unity, Recognition and Advancement of Government Employees (Courage) said that Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is really preparing for the elections of 2010, adding that they will guard the P1.41 trillion budget to ensure that it would not be used for the administration’s campaign kitty.
Courage national president Ferdinand Gaite said his group will not let the people’s taxes go to pockets of crooked officials, especially the cohorts of Malacañang.
“It is people’s money, forcedly extracted from the wages of workers and as Filipinos, it is our duty to safeguard the said money to be spent to satisfy one’s political and economic interest,” said Gaite.
Earlier, Dr. Leonor Briones, former budget and management secretary, exposed that the P1.4-trillion proposed budget, 15 percent higher than the 2008 budget, will be used to fund the campaigns of administration candidates in the presidential and senatorial elections on 2010.
In 2004, Mrs. Arroyo’s campaign managers allegedly used some government funds to support the chief executive’s candidacy and to back the campaign funds of the senatorial and local candidates running under the administration wing.
“One billion pesos were illegally transferred to the Office of the President in 2004, while the money of the poor OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) was also extracted just to fund the Philhealth cards that were distributed as part of the campaign of Mrs. Arroyo… Those are actually unforgivable. It is high time to make this regime of crooks to be held accountable for its sins against the Filipino people,” said Gaite.
According to Arroyo, the proposed budget would address not only the world food and fuel crises but also the funding requirements of the government’s priority programs -environment, education and economy.
Earlier, Sec. Silvestre Bello III, Presidential Adviser for New Government Centers, said the proposed 2009 budget would set the deficit ceiling at P40 billion ($871.08 million), or 0.05 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), lower than this year’s 1 percent.
Priorities for spending are infrastructures such as roads, bridges and other public works, along with the farm sector, schools, social welfare and the government’s health insurance program, said Mrs. Arroyo.
Meanwhile, newly appointed Socio-Economic Planning Secretary Ralph Recto said the Palace has adopted a new policy for the new budget called “performance budgeting”.
Under the new policy, Recto said, those agencies which perform well-such as departments that were able to implement projects based on the 2008 funding-will naturally get more resources and those who have the absorptive capacity to spend, will get more resources as well.
He also said that Agriculture, Public Works and Highways, and Education will be among the major recipients of additional budget next year in keeping with the commitments that the President set out in her eighth State of the Nation Address (SoNA).
Aside from the aforementioned agencies, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), the state medical insurance program, will also be getting a large chunk of the budget.
Mrs. Arroyo said that it would be “desirable” if Congress could approve the proposed 2009 national budget by December, but added that her administration has lived for many years without the budget being signed in December, adding that for the past two years, Congress failed to enact the proposed outlay, forcing the government to operate under a reenacted budget for the first quarter. (Bulatlat.com)(Bulatlat.com)
