President Rodrigo Duterte described the 2017 expenditure program as an “era of budget credibility” and vowed to protect it from abuse.
The General Appropriations Act, now reaching over P1 trillion, is a powerful tool that the government can use in furthering its socio-economic objectives, including generating jobs, reducing the poverty incidence, funding social welfare programs and providing education.
Abusing the budget or deviating from its original purpose, however, will not accomplish Mr. Duterte’s socio-economic agenda. The national budget has been abused in the past, especially by powerful politicians seeking to perpetuate their term by financing pet projects just to please their constituents and assure their reelection.
Mr. Duterte knows well that certain quarters can sabotage the budget as it has been done in the past when it was vulnerable and open to abuse. He ordered all agency heads in his budget message “to exercise political will and avoid any trace of influence from other branches of government in the implementation of programs, activities and projects.”
Agency and department executives may find it hard to resist pressure from politicians and other interest groups to tweak the expenditure program. But as their oath of office requires from them, government executives must toe the line or quit their job.
Mr. Duterte also reminded 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,” and called on his fellow public servants to extend their full commitment “in making this budget a tool for genuine change.”
Government executives should treat the national budget as an inviolable document after careful scrutiny by both houses of Congress. The budget, for one, laid out certain economic targets that must be met to keep the economy going. Veering away from these macro-economic assumptions or targets will have adverse consequences on the overall economic objectives. This could mean less job generation and government’s failure to make a dent in the fight against poverty.