PAGADIAN CITY—The Department of Budget and Management, under its recently introduced Bottom-Up-Budgeting (BUB) system, has allocated P1,160,988,062 for the implementation of different identified projects in Zamboanga Peninsula (Region 9) this year, an agency report from the DBM received here recently by Gov. Antonio Cerilles said.
Under BUB, the budget department appropriated P389,997,020 for Zamboanga del Sur; P462 million for Zamboanga del Norte; P243 million for Zamboanga Sibugay; P50 million for Zamboanga City, and P16 million for Basilan’s Isabela City.
The report explained that BUB “is a game changing mechanism that allows local government units and concerned civic and social groups to contribute directly in deciding how the national budget pie is divided every year.”
The mechanism, it said, “changes the old paradigm in the national budgeting process, making it more decentralized and participatory…designed to bring genuine equity, development and empowerment to poor households and communities and makes rural areas’ growth more inclusive and transparent.”
The report stressed that the new system ultimately “seeks to get rid of corruption and to ensure that Filipinos in villages will benefit from government projects.”
Cerilles thanked the DBM and said the amount “will spur local growth and development and ultimately uplift the socioeconomic status of its inhabitants.”