The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
How was the pork-barrel system embedded in the 2015 budget?
Former Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson said his research team found that lump-sum items are parked in the National Expenditure Program (NEP)—or the Palace-proposed budget— for later distribution to members of the House of Representatives, then to administration allies at the discretion of the Speaker in the approved General Appropriations Act (GAA).
Lacson, in a forum last week, said that, for instance, in the Department of Agriculture (DA), some P6.25 billion in total lump sums are distributed in the budget among DA regional offices. These funds passed through the House intact; even in the Senate these were not touched, according to Lacson.
Thus, when the GAA was passed, the P6.25 billion in allocations to the DA regional offices remained in the form of lump sums, since there were no specific items for these; the only difference is that most were sunk into farm-to-market roads.
“Some of the allocations for roads were P5 million; others, P10 million. There were even farm-tomarket road allocations for the National Capital Region (NCR),” Lacson said. “I would like to ask: Where can you find a farm in the NCR?”
Lacson said the discretionary funds were hidden in the many small lump sums cut into pieces among the different agencies. But ultimately, Speaker (Feliciano) Belmonte Jr. will coordinate with the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to determine the allocations of the lump sums to legislators, which have the equivalent of pork-barrel funds.
“Even Sen. (Sergio) Osmeña (III) admitted that the P200 million in the basic pork barrel of senators and P70 million for members of the House were not removed (from) the 2015 budget,” Lacson added.
But Lacson said he was not sure if all legislators received the hidden pork-barrel allocations or if these were evenly distributed.
“That should not be the case in light of the ruling of the Supreme Court on the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP),” Lacson said.
Lacson said he would definitely file a petition with the Supreme Court to question the resurrection of the pork-barrel system in the 2015 budget within two weeks.
“(Budget) Secretary (Florencio) Abad calls the 2015 GAA as a legacy budget and claims it is pork-free, but I know that members of the House submitted their proposed allocations ahead of the President’s submission of the 2015 budget to Congress,” Lacson said.
He revealed that a code system was even created for the pork-barrel distribution proposals from legislators: Class A are for those who are very close to the Palace, the allies are under Class B, while the others were placed under Class C.
“The sad thing is that if you fail to make it under those three classes, you’ll get nothing,” he said.
There are those in Class A who can recommend allocations to their colleagues who failed to make it to the class system, Lacson said.
They came up with a coded pro-forma sheets for pet projects of the less-favored House members.
The coded pro-forma sheets are submitted to the Speaker, who then coordinates with the DBM, which then looks for allocations to the proposed projects.
“That’s how things were run and when Secretary Abad claimed that the 2015 budget is porkfree and it is a legacy budget. I can’t believe him,” Lacson added.
“In the 2016 budget (worth P3.002 trillion), we still don’t know what will happen since the allocations are still under the National Expenditure Program (NEP). But even before the NEP was submitted to Congress after the State of the Nation Address (Sona), legislators have already submitted their proposed projects to the Speaker that then goes to the DBM, which identifies the projects.
“We saw this system in the 2015 budget in at least three agencies. We are completing our review on the lump sums in the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), which we believe are substantial,” Lacson said.
Lacson said his research team is looking at missing Unified Account Codified Structure (UACS) where the coded projects were placed.
Lacson said earlier that the resurrection of the pork-barrel system in the 2015 budget, which has as much as P700 billion in lump sums, was the likely result of a conspiracy between members of the Executive and legislative branches to park lumpsum appropriations without intending to use the funds for the recommended purposes, but actually for the selected legislators to realign their identified PAPs (programs, activities and projects).
Lacson said the bigger lump sums in the 2015 budget were found in Department of Social Welfare and Development, with P102.6 billion; Department of Education, P80.7 billion; Department of the Interior and Local Government, P80.7 billion; Department of Health, P75.4 billion; Department of National Defense, P66.4 billion; DA, P29.9 billion; DPWH, P11.4 billion; Department of Transportation and Communications, P11.4 billion; Department of Environment and Natural Resources, P6.1 billion; National Irrigation Authority, P13 billion; and the Philippine National Police, P6.7 billion.