DAVAO CITY—President-elect Rodrigo Duterte has launched a plan to boost infrastructure spending and put an end to the practice of underspending while chiding the Aquino administration for politicizing the bottom-up budgeting scheme during the recent election campaign.
“There aren’t much infrastructure built. There is a need that whatever is given to you —use it,” Duterte told tens of thousands of his supporters gathered at the Davao Crocodile Park to celebrate his election victory dubbed “DU 31” (Duterte Won).
“If you are a department and I give you 30 million, at the end of the year, that 30 million must be spent to the last centavo,” he added.
During the last six years of the Aquino administration, government has continued to underspend that slowed down the economy in the later years of Aquino’s term.
While failing to meet its spending targets, the government’s revenue-collecting agencies—Bureau of Internal Revenue and Bureau of Customs—have consistently failed to meet their respective collection goals.
Last year, the BIR missed its full-year collection target by 8.3 percent: it collected P1.335 trillion versus its revenue target of P1.456 trillion. The BoC missed its revenue target by 9.5 percent it collected P369.3 billion versus its planned revenue goal of P408 billion. In 2014 alone, planned spending was P2,284.3 billion while actual spending was P1,981.6 billion, or a difference of P302.7 billion.
Another program aimed at bankrolling infrastructure projects within communities, the Bottom Up Budgeting was criticized after being used by administration stalwarts to allegedly “bribe” officials into supporting candidates from the ruling Liberal Party.
“Ang problema with bottoms up [it] came late, ginagamit sa pamumulitika,” Duterte said.
Peter Laviña, Duterte’s campaign spokesperson had earlier criticized the program for cornering support from local officials into voting for the administration bet, Manuel Roxas.
Duterte said that government workers should be “like bank tellers,” adding that “corruption must stop” in government agencies.
“If you lose or overspent government money, you’re not doing your job properly… Like bank tellers, at the end of the day, you should not have deficient or excess money. Because if you have surplus or deficit, your’e a fool.”
“That is just an example when you talk about peso, but you talk about billions. There is corruption in here,” he stressed.
In the same speech, Duterte said that he will build more national high schools so that students don’t have to walk 20 to 30 kilometers just to study and prioritize healthcare for Filipinos.
He added that earnings of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (Pagcor) will be used to support his healthcare agenda.