The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
By Luis Leoncio
With the public hearings in Congress on the proposed 2017 national budget to start this week, a budget watchdog has urged the Duterte administration to release the money already appropriated to provinces devastated by Supertyphoon Yolanda in 2013.
“If genuine change is really coming, there is no better evidence of this than to see this reflected in the national budget. It should be President Duterte’s starting budget for eradicating poverty and achieving sustainable development,” Social Watch Philippines (SWP) said.
During the presidential campaign, then-Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte asked Liberal Party (LP) standard-bearer Manuel “Mar” Roxas to account for the billions of pesos given by foreign donors for the victims of Yolanda. “They are silent about it. Now, I will ask Roxas, ‘Where did the Yolanda funds go?’” Duterte said.
In response, Malacañang said then that the money has been properly accounted for. “According to the records of the Foreign Aid Transparency Hub, the Philippines received a total of $386.2 million (P18.15 billion) in foreign aid, 86 percent or $330.8 million (P15.5 billion) of which was received by non-governmental organizations, multilateral agencies and others,” then-Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. said.
In 2014, the Aquino administration earmarked in P150 billion for the reconstruction plan of Yolanda devastated areas; the last tranche, worth P46 billion, was included in the P3.002-trillion national budget for 2016.
SWP had criticized the “dismal implementation” of the reconstruction and rehabilitation projects for Yolanda victims.
“The implementation of the Yolanda recovery projects has been agonizingly slow and miserably falling short. The poor are far from building back and are, in fact, poorer now than before the disaster,” aid Isagani Serrano, co-convenor of SWP.
Based on the report posted in the website of National Economic Development Authority (Neda), as of March 2016, the completion rate of houses for the Yolanda victims was only 9 percent, and 42 percent of the target housing units has not even started.
Only 19,330 out of the 205,128 units intended to provide shelter to the victims were completed and 98,393 are still being constructed, it said.
Serrano said livelihood assistance to Yolanda survivors and efforts to make sure they have shelter and are less vulnerable to disaster are also lagging behind.
“We are rebuilding communities not to bring them back to the state of poverty and vulnerability previous to Yolanda. The reconstruction and rehabilitation should rebuild the communities, reduce their vulnerability and become more resilient to the negative impact of extreme weather events that will hit them in the future,” Serrano added.
SWP has conducted Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) of Yolanda reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts in select municipalities in Leyte, specifically, Tolosa, MacArthur, Dulag, Mayorga, and Tacloban city in its resettlement program. The study was also conducted in Basey and Salcedo in Samar.
“The figures in the Neda website report reflect the situation in these areas. Only 8 percent of the housing requirements of the displaced communities in these municipalities have been completed,” it said.
The “emergency” nature of the Emergency Shelter Assistance (ESA) lost its essence as these were dispensed one to two years after the calamity because of bureaucratic red tape and political influences, SWP added.
The ESA funds were downloaded to the DSWD Regional Office in Region VIII only on May 12 and 21, 2015, and were released to the local government units (LGUs) from May 29, 2015, to September 30, 2015.
The LGUs released the ESA to the beneficiaries from July 10 to December 2015, except for one LGU that immediately released the ESA the day after the fund was received.
“The delayed release of funds affected the implementation of livelihood programs of the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA), reportedly, because of unliquidated cash advances,” SWP said.
SWP said the newly released 2015 statistics in Region VIII attest to this. The broad-based growth was not realized due to the limitations in agriculture and fisheries sector.
“President Duterte has astutely tapped into the people’s long-felt frustration for change, one that will make a positive difference in their lives. The 10-point agenda of the government is a welcome start, but as responsible and patriotic citizens, we will engage this agenda with a view to making it even more responsive to the needs of our people, especially for the poor and socially excluded,” Marivic Raquiza, SWP co-convenor added.
Raquiza said all good intentions and plans, oftentimes, rise and fall, on the basis of adequate provision of funding.
SWP, through its Alternative Budget Initiative (ABI), organized in 2006, has consistently engaged the various administrations toward ensuring a pro-poor, pro-environment budget.
Consistent with this mandate, SWP said it would continue to work with policy makers and ensure that the interests and welfare of subaltern groups are translated into significant budgetary allocations to address their needs.
The proposed budget or National Expenditure Program (NEP) for 2017 was turned over to both the House of Representatives and the Senate last week.
National budget
The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) submitted to Congress last Aug. 15 the proposed P3.35-trillion national budget for 2017 or National Expenditure Program (NEP), which Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno said aims to achieve the programs and projects in Mr. Duterte’s 10-point socioeconomic development agenda.
It is higher by 11.6 percent than the current year’s budget of P3.002 trillion and represents 20.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2017, higher than this year’s 20.1 percent GDP share.
Forty-percent of the proposed budget will be allotted for social services, 27.6 percent for economic services, and 22 percent for general public services and defense.
Diokno said the country’s total infrastructure spending for 2017 will increase to P860.7 billion, which is equivalent to 5.4 percent of GDP, noting that the golden age of public infrastructure in this country will be realized by the end of the Duterte administration.
He noted that the budgets for the Philippine National Police (PNP) and Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) were “substantially increased” to boost the administration’s war against crime, illegal drugs and terrorism.
The National Police will receive P110.4 billion, or an increase of 24.6 percent from the 2016 budget; the AFP will receive P130.6 billion, or 15 percent higher than this year’s.
The Department of Education’s budget topped all the government agencies with P570.4 billion, a 31-percent hike from this year’s budget. This will help sustain the major education reform K to 12 program, in terms of classroom construction, hiring of additional teachers, and providing student assistance.