President Aquino and the Cabinet have approved a proposed P1.816-trillion national budget for 2012, which is 10.4 percent higher than the P1.645-trillion budget this year.
Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said the new budget is focused on helping the poor with a bigger allocation for the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program.
Abad said in a press briefing at Malacañang yesterday that the budget would implement the President’s commitment to make the people feel the gains of better fiscal management by doing away with wasteful spending and corruption.
“This is a budget that is focused on achieving results: that the dividends of good governance reach the poor in a direct, immediate and substantial way,” Abad said.
Abad explained that the budget was focused on the five key result areas of the social contract: anti-corruption and good governance, poverty reduction and empowerment of the poor, inclusive economic growth, just and lasting peace and the rule of law and integrity of the environment.
“We have started the journey towards prudent and effective public expenditure management. We are now escalating reform by ensuring that the benefits of public spending go directly to the people,” he said.
He said social services – mainly basic education, public health and the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino (PPP) Program or the CCT program – would get the lion’s share of the proposed budget of 31.6 percent or P573.5 billion, which was an increase of 10 percent over its current budgetary allocation of P521.4 billion.
To support rapid, inclusive and sustainable growth, Abad said the economic services sector would receive the second biggest allocation, which was 24.3 percent or P442.1 billion of the budget, an increase of 22.2 percent over its P361.9 billion this year.
Abad said infrastructure and other capital outlays, especially those supporting agriculture, tourism and industrial development, were given greater emphasis with a 27.2 percent increase to P243.9 billion in 2012 from P191.7 billion.
The general public services sector will receive P322.3 billion or 17.7 percent of the 2012 proposed budget, or an increase of 11.9 percent; while the defense sector will receive P111.4 billion or 6.1 percent of the proposed budget, or an increase of 9.9 percent, he added.
Meanwhile, to sustain fiscal consolidation efforts, Abad said the share of the debt burden on the national budget would decrease to 20.2 percent or P367.2 billion, from 22.6 percent or P372.1 billion.
A fiscal deficit of P286 billion or 2.6 percent of gross domestic product is targeted in 2012, lower than this year’s target of P300 billion or 3 percent of GDP.
Malacañang released the budget of only 10 departments and the judiciary.
The Department of Education gets P237 billion; Public Works and Highways, P125.9 billion; National Defense, P106.9 billion; Interior and Local Government, P99.3 billion; Social Welfare and Development, P53.6 billion; Agriculture, P52.9 billion; Health P44.4 billion; Transportation and Communications, P38.6 billion; Agrarian Reform, P16.3 billion, and the judiciary, P15.6 billion.
“More importantly, we ensured that every peso counts. First, we sustained zero-based budgeting to promote efficiency and effectiveness in spending. With this, we were able to scale-up spending on programs and projects that are aligned with the social contract,” Abad said.
Abad said the President approved the proposed budget, subject to some modifications and clarifications to the department budgets that he made during a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday night.
Of the 10 departments with the largest budgetary allocation, Education will remain at the top with P237 billion, 14.4 percent more than its P207.3-billion budget in 2011, to fill critical resource gaps in classrooms, teachers and learning materials.
The Department of Social Welfare and Development will receive the largest budgetary increase among departments of 56 percent, to P53.6 billion from P34.3 billion, particularly to support 3 million households under the CCT program from this year’s 2.3 million.
The Department of Public Works and Highways will receive the second largest budgetary allocation with P125.9 billion, an increase of 13.8 percent from this year’s P110.6 billion, to support the paving of all national primary and secondary roads and bridges within Aquino’s term.
The budget of the Department of National Defense does not include the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ modernization fund.
“Yes, they (defense) have the P5-billion modernization fund and on top of that, an additional, if I’m not mistaken, over P3 billion to secure the Malampaya (natural gas facility off Palawan). So that’s about over P8 billion.”
Asked about specifics on security needs in the West Philippine Sea regarding the dispute with China over the Spratly Islands, Abad said: “I will have to refer that to the secretary of national defense for more discussion but that is not to say that the government is not acting on that, in fact, there have been a series of discussions and even before discussing this budget they have already made provisions to increase this year’s budget of the AFP by about P11 billion to provide for those requirements of the AFP.”
Meanwhile, the Department of Agriculture will receive the third largest budgetary increase of 50.4 percent, to P52.9 billion from P35.2 billion, primarily to restore irrigation systems for more than 54,000 hectares of agricultural lands and rehabilitate those for more than 86,000 hectares, to support the country’s rice self-sufficiency goals.
“The 2012 budget is the first budget that will be fully prepared, legislated and executed under the Aquino administration so we want to really ensure that the Aquino brand of governance is fully reflected in the national budget,” Abad said, noting that it would be submitted to Congress on July 26, a day after the President’s State of the Nation Address.
Abad said “it’s a results-oriented and results-based budget” because “we want to be able to put our money where our mouth is” and reap the benefits of better selected projects with proper costing and better management.
(source: Phil Star)
