President Rodrigo Duterte in proposing his first national budget—which he named “A Budget for Real Change”—stating in simple but clear words that:
“It is a Budget that gives flesh and bone to the promise by which I won as President: to fight for social justice. It was designed to realize change in the here and now.”
But his proposed budget for 2017, which Budget Secretary Ben Diokno submitted last Monday to House Speaker Bebot Alvarez and Majority Leader Rudy Fariñas, was only worth P3.35 trillion.
It was merely 11.6 percent more than the “Paggugol na Matuwid: Saligan ng Tuloy-Tuloy na Pag-Unlad” budget that his predecessor, President Benigno Aquino III, last submitted.
Isn’t this almost single-digit percent increase what corporations on a “coasting along” or “business-as-usual” mode impute in their annual operating budgets?
How could it enable President Duterte to accomplish the kind of change that he wants us to have?
His proposed budget is increasing by 14.5 percent or to P50.2 billion government’s subsidy to PhilHealth. But this amount is only to cover the increase in the number of our subsidized poor members.
Like previous budgets, his proposal is again allocating the same P2,400 as annual premium contribution for each of the 15.4 million indigent families and 5.4 million senior citizens who comprise more than half of PhilHealth’s membership.
This subsidy is not even enough to maintain the low support value of PhilHealth benefits.
As a consequence, PhilHealth’s members cannot expect any improvement in benefits. Instead, they should brace themselves for higher out-of-pocket expenses. Health providers such as hospitals and medical professionals have not adjusted their fees for some time. Most likely, they would invoke inflation— real and imaginary—and justify charging higher medical care costs in 2017.
The proposed budget is also continuing to support the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino program or 4Ps with a P78.7-billion budget for 4.62 million families. It is including, for the first time, the distribution of rice worth P23.4 billion to 3 million of these households for 12 months at 20 kilos each, or at P32.50 per kilo.
But only P1,400 is being allocated monthly to each family, which is the same unadjusted amount of the first 4Ps in President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s administration.
Thus, despite the 4Ps budget being increased by 25 percent, not much is being added to the poor man’s dining table.
President Digong has practically nothing for pensioners, too.
Worse, he is even forewarning the military and uniformed personnel about the phaseout of their long-standing pension tradition where their pension payments are appropriated by Congress. Instead, they would be required to contribute, through salary deductions, under “a new pension fund that is similar to, or part of the Government Service Insurance System.”
The President’s budget message didn’t say anything about the P500 social pension.
It’s a good thing that Secretary Diokno had earlier assured us that P17.9 billion had been set aside for the social pensions of 2.8 million indigent senior citizens.
Summing up, P146.8 billion is being allocated to the poor who are beneficiaries of PhilHealth, 4Ps and social pensions. In fact, even if these programs—which we interchangeably call subsidies, dole or welfare—are not being administered by Social Security System, they are considered social security benefits.
SSS could have been tasked to pay out the P500 social pensions, similar to how PhilHealth is administering the social health insurance of indigent families and senior citizens whose contributions are paid through the Department of Health from national budget allocations.
The social pension allocation is released to the Department of Social Welfare and Development, but it could likewise turn over the social pension’s administration to SSS.
But for now, not a single peso is being allocated from the national budget to SSS members and its pensioners.
The Budget for Real Change seems to have left out its 2 million pensioners.
Remember the P2,000 pension increase that they thought they’d receive early this year? It would have been a meaningful follow-up to the 5-percent pension increase that PNoy approved in 2014. It was so insignificant that it adjusted their P1,200 minimum pension by only P60, and their P10,000 pension by P500.
If forced to grant that P2,000 pension increase but without the corresponding funding, SSS would soon face bankruptcy. As fiduciary, it really has no choice but to oppose it.
But when then-Mayor Digong supported its grant during the campaign period, SSS pensioners thought he had promised its release to them once he got elected.
Now president, he may have already forgotten his promise because he has not allocated for it even a single peso in his first proposed budget.
Hopefully, he would later ask Congress to insert a one-time subsidy to finance the first year funding of this increase.
Immediately thereafter, Congress could pass a law mandating the reform of SSS and prioritizing the increase of its contributions.
These actions would then usher the real change in our national pension system.
Without them, SSS pensioners could cry and despair day in and day out, but still the decision to deny them the P2,000 pension increase would not be changed.