UNLIKE in the past administrations, there won’t be any abuses to the budget after President Rodrigo Duterte vowed the enactment of the P3.35-trillion national funds for 2017 would be “an era of budget credibility.”
“This budget will start to give flesh and bone to my promise of real change. Anchored on my administration’s 10-point Socioeconomic Agenda, it is designed to bring equitable opportunities for inclusive growth,” Duterte said in his Budget Action Message to Congress.
“The year of budget credibility has also started. Unlike in the past where the budget was vulnerable and open to abuse, this 2017 budget ensures spending will be kept within the boundaries of the law. What you see in the Gaa, is what the government will spend,” he added.
Duterte also asked government officials and employees to resist meddling by politicians in the implementation of projects.
“Accordingly, I hereby direct all agency heads to exercise political will and avoid any trace of influence from other branches of government in the implementation of programs, activities and projects,” he said
The 2017 budget, under scrunity by some legislators who claimed there were pork-like items in next year’s spending program, would run to hundreds of millions of pesos and some were “craftily hidden in many agencies.”
The budget had been allegedly circumvented by the executive when former President Benigno Aquino III and his budget chief Florencio Abad who reportedly designed the Disbursement Acceleration Program.
The two are facing charges in connection with the funding scheme as well as the use of the Priority Development Assistance Funds in the previous administration.
Witnesses against accused pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Lim Napoles as well as officials of the Commission on Audit, who presented a truckload of documents, had linked nearly 200 congressmen and senators to the possible misuse of the PDAF.
The President reminded all government agencies that any increase in appropriations and new budgetary items should carry with them “corresponding increases in the respective outputs and improved outcomes of the agencies concerned.”
“As we are poised to implement the 2017 national budget on the first working day of 2017, I call on my fellow public servants to extend their more than 100-percent commitment in making this budget a tool for genuine change,” he added.