Gov’t to pursue performance-based incentives

MANILA, Philippines – The Aquino government continues to adopt a better and more transparent compensation and incentives system based on the performance of public institutions and of individual civil servants, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) said yesterday.

In a statement, Budget and Management Secretary Florencio Abad said the administration decided to impose a P25,000-ceiling for collective negotiation agreement (CNA) incentives of government employees.

Abad pointed out that the issuance of Budget Circular 2011-5 is part of the government’s key reforms to establish fairness and prudence in the management of public funds.

“We have seen how government agencies have constricted expenses for crucial programs and projects only to manufacture savings for CNA incentives. Oftentimes, this practice has been abused, with agencies bloating their budgets for maintenance and other operating expenses so they could provide a larger incentive payout,” he said.

According to him, the practice of providing larger incentive payout has distorted the salary system within government as some agencies provide obscenely high CNA incentives while others are practically dealing with spare change.

“We want to restore fairness in the public sector compensation system,” he said.

The Budget Circular also limits the number of MOOE items from which these incentives can be sourced: travel, communication, repair and maintenance, transportation and delivery, supplies and materials, and utilities.

Abad said the limitation ensures that the agencies’ capability to deliver public goods and services is not compromised.

He stressed that cost-cutting measures in MOOE should not result in inefficient and ineffective operations.

The budget chief explained that less than 40 percent of the country’s 1.163 billion government employees receive CNA incentives because several departments and agencies have no accredited employees’ unions to date.

President Aquino recently issued Administrative Order 25 creating an inter-agency task force to establish a unified and integrated Results-Based Performance Management System (RBPMS) that would be the basis for measuring agency and individual performance and for determining performance-based compensation and incentives.

“To restore fairness in government salary standards, President Aquino ordered us to design a better, performance-based compensation package that would reward measurable outputs and outcomes. And I firmly believe that the people are one with us in our goal to reward their best-performing agencies and public servants,” he said.

He stressed that public funds should be used accordingly and be put wisely in government projects that would benefit the Filipino people. –Lawrence Agcaoili (The Philippine Star)