Budget for stagnation, not reform – Joker

PRESIDENT Benigno Aquino 3rd promised a reform budget for 2011 but debates and deliberations indicated that it was a stagnation budget, Sen. Joker Arroyo charged on Wednesday.

“It is bereft of the tools for growth. It is a prescription for stagnancy, an anti-growth budget,” he said in a turno en contra [opposition’s turn] on the P1.645-trillion budget proposed for 2011.

The minority delivered the traditional turno en contra after the majority finished its sponsorship of the budget.

Sen. Franklin Drilon, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, ended his sponsorship on Tuesday night after spending almost seven hours defending the P21-billion conditional cash transfer (CCT) program that the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is set to undertake.

Senator Arroyo decried the reduction in the appropriations for the Department of Public Works and Highways despite the “antiquated” roads, bridges and highways that cause the country to lag behind its Association of Southeast Asian Nations neighbors.

“That means for 2011, there would be no appropriations for new and much needed roads or infrastructure, which the country needs very badly for our development. It prejudices our development and tourism,” he said.

The President, however, justified the reduction in the Public Works department budget, saying that new constructions will be undertaken by the public-private partnership program of his administration.

Senator Arroyo warned that if private investors do not invest, the building of new infrastructure will be at a standstill.

“The government has put all its eggs in the private sector. It has no fallback position,” he said.

The senator also zeroed in on the “overconcentration of scarce funds” on the Social Welfare department’s CCT.

He pointed out that the P4-billion administration fund for the program is more than the budgets of the Department of Tourism, the Department of Trade and Industry and other line departments “that are vehicles for growth and development.”

Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago, meanwhile, proposed to reduce the P21-billion budget for the CCT to P15 billion—a 50-percent increase from its 2010 budget of P10 billion.

“We want this program to succeed. But the current DSWD leaders do not have any track record of an efficient and effective implementation of a [large-scale] project,” she said.

Santiago also wanted the Social Welfare department to make a quarterly report on the implementation of the CCT.

“In the spirit of transparency and accountability, citizens should know who the CCT recipients are. The citizens whose names appear in the report but do not actually receive the grants should be able to raise questions with the appropriate authorities,” she said.

Drilon, however, insisted that he will move to retain the P21-billion budget for the CCT.

“Let us give this administration a chance to prove its worth and if after one year they have not proved [its] worth, we will be less sympathetic,” he said.

The Senate was still holding a caucus on proposed amendments to the budget at press time.

“Hopefully, we can arrive at a consensus so we can approve the budget on third and final reading today,” Drilon said.
The agreements will be manifested on the floor to make them formal.

Drilon said that he is confident that a bicameral conference committee to resolve conflicts between the House and Senate versions of the 2011 budget would start next week. –Efren L. Danao, Senior Reporter, Manila Times