THE Duterte administration submitted its first budget proposal this week, a spending plan for 2017 that tops out at P3.35 trillion, 11.6 percent higher than the P3.018-trillion budget for 2016 passed during the previous administration.
The higher budget makes sense if we accept the argument that the previous administration woefully underspent on infrastructure, which will be a key focus of the 2017 spending plan.
The Department of Public Works and Highways, for example, will see its budget rise to P860.7 billion, P19.5 billion more than its allocation for 2016. The allocation is significant, in that it represents 5.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), suggesting we are finally investing as much as our Southeast Asian neighbors on infrastructure.
Some P355.7 billion will be allocated to transport infrastructure such as railways, seaports, airports and road networks. Some P31.5 billion will be set aside for the Mindanao Logistics Infrastructure network to lower the cost of logistics in the region, while P75.8 billion will fund flood control systems.
The administration also promises to revitalize public-private partnership (PPP) projects, which were dismally slow to take off under the Aquino administration.
The 2017 budget also shows that the administration will invest more in people.
Education will have the biggest chunk of the budget, with an allocation of P699.95 billion, or 20.9 percent of the total spending plan. The Department of Education will get P570.4 billion, a 31 percent hike from its 2016 allocation, and will include a P2.8 billion allotment for hiring 53,831 additional teachers and P124.6 billion for the construction and replacement of 37,500 classrooms, particularly for Senior High School.
“If we are to compete with the rest of the world, then the government must invest more for its greatest resource—its people,” President Rodrigo Duterte said in his budget message.
It is a sentiment we can all rally behind—as is the administration’s plan to revitalize the agricultural sector, after mismanagement and corruption from the previous administration took their toll on farm output.
We also laud the increase in the budget to carry out the Reproductive Health Law, an effort that the previous administration pursued only half-heartedly.
Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno described the spending plan as “a budget for real change” and all the way funds have been allocated indicate that this is true.
The spending plan, however, is only half the equation. As we have seen time and again during the Aquino administration, even the best laid plans can be torpedoed by corruption, sheer incompetence or both.
With a new budget in the works, it is time the Duterte Cabinet show us that it is capable of executing these plans with economy and efficiency. There is where true change lies.