DBM should not just be a releaser of funds, but should monitor funds after they are released.
Over the decades of national-budget making in this country, flood control projects have established themselves as two of the principal sinkholes of tax payer-money usage.
The disgraceful record of flood control was again brought to the forefront of national attention during the recent back-to-back typhoons that brought knee-high water to the cities and municipalities of some of this country’s most important regions.
The ensuing events were entirely predictable. All the major non-governmental sectors of Philippine society – civic, business and professional organizations, the churches, the press, transport groups and consumer associations – were up in arms and denouncing those who in their view were mainly accountable for yet another manifestation of inability to do a good flood-control job.
The usual objects of their denunciation – the usual suspects – were the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), Congress, the local government units (LGUs) and the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA).
One governmental institution is missing from this line-up of the usual objects of denunciation. That institution is the Department of Budget and Management (DBM). DBM is never included in discussions of accountability for the occurrence of disasters like the recent floods. This is incomprehensible and wrong.
Congress deserves to be held accountable because it is the instrumentality of government that appropriates— misappropriates appears to have become the more accurate word—funds for infrastructure projects. And the implementing agencies, especially DPWH, deserve to be castigated for mis-installing or altogether failing to install projects for which Congress has appropriated funds. And they are going to be held accountable for the losses and damage caused by the recent floods.
But hardly anything is being said or written about the role played by DBM in the disaster. It is as though DBM was just a bystander and was not involved in any of the terrible things that recently befell Metro Manila and other parts of this country. DBM again got a free pass.
As already stated, this is not right.
Contrary to the apparent thinking of the DBM’s leadership and staff, their institution’s responsibility does not end with the release of Special Allotment Release Orders (SAROs) and other documents supporting releases of funds. Their responsibility goes beyond making releases of funds. After all, the word ‘Management’ is part of their institution’s name.
It is my view that, in the fulfillment of its budget-management responsibility, DBM should not just be a releaser of funds but should monitor funds after they are released with a view to determining (1) whether the funds are really used for the declared projects and (2) whether the funds are fully spent and not partially ‘parked’.
The DBM needs to have a counterpart of the US Congress’s Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which not only processes requests for releases of funds but evaluates the performance of other agencies in the implementation of their projects. CBO’s annual report is treated with great respect and its criticism of an agency’s fund-use record is regarded as something to be avoided.
DBM is called the Department of Budget and Management for a reason. Its job is to ensure that the annual national budget is not—‘ceases to be’ is probably more accounts—a piggy bank for Congressmen and their favorite contractors. Otherwise, we might as well drop Management from its name and merely call it Department of the Budget.
(llagasjessa@yahoo.com)
