VICE President Jejomar Binay accused the Aquino administration Wednesday of deliberately not spending funds to save money for the Liberal Party’s campaign for the 2016 presidential elections.
He made the statement during his visit to the Bais City public market in Negros Oriental, saying underspending was stalling the country’s economic growth and impeding the delivery of basic services to the people.
He said it was estimated that the Aquino administration had deliberately avoided spending some P600 billion since 2011.
He insinuated that all that money would be used to buy votes next year.
Binay on Wednesday also pressed for an increase in the tax limit on the balikbayan boxes sent by Filipino workers abroad to P150,000 as the current P10,000 was no longer realistic.
“The current P10,000 tax limit is no longer in tune with the times. It was set in 1978 when the exchange rate was P7.37 to $1,” Binay said.
“If a returning [Filipino worker] has with her a brand-new laptop as a present for her son or daughter, a laptop that cost only P10,000 would have been spent for the tax exemption.”
Binay said raising the tax ceiling would be token compared to the millions of dollars that Filipino workers send home.
“The latest figures show that the remittances from January to August this year have already reached $17.9 billion,” Binay said.
Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda slammed Binay’s claims and said the government’s policy of underspending was old news.
He accused Binay of sour-graping because he failed to get President Aquino’s endorsement and anointed Roxas as his possible successor.
But Binay’s spokesman Joey Salgado insisted “it is a documented fact that the administration has underspent.”
“While the election nears, they [the Aquino administration] are now spending a lot of public funds for political purposes,” Salgado said.
“Aside from underspending, the problem is really the selective amnesia of Mr. Lacierda.”
Lacierda had earlier cited a Budget Department report saying the national government’s spending continued to pick up with another two-digit year-on-year growth of 16.6 percent in September to conclude a quarterly growth of 19.3 percent.
Spending for September reached P186.3 billion, surpassing the P160 billion in disbursements in 2014 by 16.6 percent. Third-quarter spending hit P558.5 billion, which was P90.2 billion higher than the P468.4 billion gained during the same period last year.