P500-B pork also found in 2016 budget

By Riza Lozada 

While some P400 billion in potential pork-barrel funds were found embedded in the 2015 budget, according to studies conducted by former Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson, the 2016 budget has as much as P500 billion in lump sums, former National Treasurer Leonor Briones told The Market Monitor. 

Briones, lead convenor of Social Watch Philippines (SWP), said the process in which pork barrel is being incorporated into the budget under the Aquino administration is much worse than during the term of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

The creation of discretionary funds is even more alarming in this administration, compared with that in the previous one, because when Arroyo appropriated savings, it was done in a legal way, according to Briones.

She said she also planned to bring the case before the Supreme Court (SC).

Previously, the SC declared as unconstitutional the practice of Malacañang, under Mr. Aquino, of declaring savings in the budget before the end of a fiscal year, in a ruling related to its 2014 decision disallowing the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).

“The lump sums constitute a huge fund of P500 billion. To be fair, not all were due to the transfer of funds but there is an increase of reallotments from discontinued projects. All presidents did that (transfer of funds). But GMA did it in a legal way. She reduced on debt service. But now allocations for itemized projects in the budget are merely transferred to other projects,” Briones said.

She also said the SWP will launch a campaign to solicit one million signatures to avert the scaling up of the pork barrel to billions through unexplained realignments and congressional insertions in the 2016 national budget.

Briones stressed the urgency the campaign as a result of a review of the SWP on the budget, which revealed not just millions but billions of pesos for realignment under the National Expenditure Program (NEP).

She said the SWP has been working on the study apart from and independent of the study undertaken by Lacson.

Briones said that, while Lacson’s team focused on the 2015 budget, her group looked into the proposed 2016 budget. She urged a review of the General Provisions of the NEP for 2016 and the process undertaken by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to realign funds in the budget.

Briones said the general provisions in the 2016 budget were altered in many different ways in the administration’s efforts to legalize billions in lump sums.

The forward budgeting method of Budget Secretary Florencio Abad in the NEP for 2016 was also cited by Briones as among the schemes undertaken to create discretionary funds.

She advised the government to fix first the 2016 budget before implementing the multiyear budgeting system, which was first adopted during the term of Benjamin Diokno, the budget secretary of President Joseph Estrada, who is now an economics professor at the University of the Philippines School of Economics.

The legal issue contemplated in Briones’s SC case will focus on the participation of Congress in the budget reallocation even after this branch of government already passed the national budget.

“Congress changed the meaning of savings, and in the 2016 budget bill, it inserted phrases that contravened the SC decision,” Briones said.

She said discretionary funds under Mr. Aquino have been growing yearly, with lump sums in the 2015 budget estimated at P435 billion, based on Lacson’s study, while the SWP found P500 billion in lump sums in the 2016 allocations, based on the SWP study.

“We have been involved in the monitoring of the budget since 2003. Social Watch and Lacson have been seriously looking into the lump sums since 2006,” she said.

“The resurrection of pork barrel is a serious violation of the Constitution and three SC decisions, but what Congress did was to change the language in the budget law to legitimize pork barrel which the SC already ruled as illegal,” Briones said.

In a 2013 decision, the SC also ruled unconstitutional the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), or the congressional pork barrel, and the similar accumulation of dicretionary funds.

Briones said many projects with items in the budget were either discontinued or tagged uncompleted to justify the accumulation of savings, which are then recycled into discretionary funds, since the funds for these are considered unobligated.

Such practice of declaring certain projects not implemented is becoming more deliberate, with funds intended for these projects transferred to other agencies and more insertions are being done in the national budget, Briones said.

Briones said the PDAF and the DAP, which the High Court declared unconstitutional, are now appearing in another form.

“Projects that were canceled or slow in implementation, or for whatever reason, have their funds realigned that made the Executive undertake functions of the legislature when they transfer budgets to other offices,” she said.

“From millions of pesos, the practice now involves billions and are increasing in amount. It is open to abuse because we do not know how these are used,” she said.