CCT to get largest slice of 2013 national budget — Palace

In what could be described as part of Malacañang’s grand preparation for next year’s polls, the Palace is allocating the biggest slice of the 2013 budget to social services.

According to the Palace, part of the government’s social service is the administration’s conditional cash transfer program that involves cash dole-outs to millions of pre-qualified beneficiaries belonging to the “poorest of the poor.”

Department of Budget Management (DBM) Secretary Butch Abad said the administration earmarked 34.8 percent or P698.4 billion of the P2.006-trillion proposed 2013 national budget for Social Services.

The move is deemed as “consistent with the administration’s priority agenda of reducing poverty incidence to 16.6 percent by 2016.”

At a press briefing, top Palace officials said the 2013 allocation for Social Services — the largest among the other sector allocations — is 13.9 percent or P85 billion higher than the P613.4 billion outlay for the sector in 2012.

“The people’s instruction to the president is clear: spend every government peso properly to rescue our people from poverty,” says deputy presidential spokesman Abigail Valte in a statement read before Palace reporters.

Prior to the press briefing, Abad said key social service delivery agencies such as the Departments of Education (DepEd), Health (DoH) and Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) would still have ample funds seen as higher than what they have for the current year.

Said departments continue to belong to the top 10 agencies with the largest budgets.

These agency outlays are also larger year-on-year to support the accelerated deployment of poverty reduction interventions.

Simultaneous with Abad’s statement defining the components of the proposed 2013 national budget, top Malacañang executives hinted next year’s national allocation would be an “Empowerment Budget.”

They cited safeguards ensuring to directly benefit every peso that is spent in the budget.
Valte said the 2013 budget is a manifestation of the President’s commitment to work on measures that would see government help directly landing to the beneficiaries.

She said the bigger budget allocations would allow the government to solve one major problem per year.

She said for every year, the government would be able to provide closure on problems seen bugging past administrations year in and year out.

Among the national concerns Valte is referring to include the gap between the teacher and classrooms, rice-self sufficiency, among others.

She said the President also made sure the huge budget allocations come with stronger government accountability to perform, apparently in reference to government under-spending.

Valte hinted there would also be significant system overhauls governing fund releases.
“So we are adopting certain policies that will allow us to execute the budget faster,” she said.
Valte said next year’s budget wasn’t drawn from one’s mind but is a product of greater stakeholder participation in budget preparation and execution.

“Now, the first principle, greater and deeper commitment to the Aquino social contract: As I said, this budget has been designated to focus public resources on those key areas. Now, just to make sure that we work according to those priorities, we continue to use the zero-based budgeting approach. And then we have started on another approach which is also moving along towards better convergence of funding which is the program budgeting approach” says Valte on reading Aquino’s statement.

With a proposed national budget ready for submission in time for Aquino’s third State of the Nation Address, Valte urged the legislators to accelerate the completion of priority program targets.

“So, toward this end, we have designated the Department of Public Works and Highways as the principal infrastructure agency, meaning, all construction activities will now be undertaken — the design, the costing, the procurement or the bidding, as well as the supervision — by the DPWH so that the other agencies can concentrate on their core mandates like DepEd in pedagogy or teaching, Department of Health on healthcare delivery, DAR on land tenure improvement. This will… And like what we did last year, before the 2012 budget was enacted, we will again conduct pre-bidding activities on infrastructure projects this year. So on July 24, we will be issuing a directive to all departments to begin bidding out projects short of awarding them,” she added.
Malacañang, Valte said, has also put in place measures that would make sure that approved infrastructure projects would not take so much time in the documentation process.

“Thus projects approved in November must be bidded out the same month to allow the project to commence actual construction work Jan. 2 of the following year, in the same manner that DepEd will start hiring their teachers in July this year so that by the end of this year, we would have known where to deploy 61,000 new teachers and by May 15, we will be issuing their appointments effective that day and they will be deployed to their stations,” says Valte.
Amid safety features in place, Valte assured the public of optimal transparency insofar as government spending is concerned.

“Now, in terms of ensuring transparency, we sustain our policy against lump sum funds. So this year, we did not accept any budget from any agency which were lump sums. So they have to be disaggregated in terms of, you know, specific locations, specific projects and specific budgets. This will allow us to bid these projects out early this year. With the programs and projects fleshed out in detail in the budget, then the government — and this is a new, an important reform that we’re introducing next year — will be able to shift to a budget as a release document regime.”

On the 2013 national budget, DepEd has been allocated with a total of P292.7 billion, 22.6 percent or P55.9 billion more than its P238.8-billion budget in 2012 to allow more elbow room for the K plus 12.

This allocation will support the closure of all education resource gaps in 2013 through the construction and rehabilitation of 31,789 classrooms with accompanying furniture and sanitation facilities; the hiring of 61,510 teachers, procurement of 31.1 million textbooks and teachers’ manuals, among others.

DoH will receive an allocation of P56.8 billion, which is 24 percent or P11 billion higher than its 2012 budget of P45.8 billion to support the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals on Health.

This amount will support the coverage of 5.2 million poor households under the National Health Insurance Program, the construction and rehabilitation of 2,243 rural health units and 403 district hospitals, and the deployment of 22,500 nurses and other healthcare professionals to the barrios.

To escalate the delivery of effective social protection packages, the DSWD budget was increased by P56.8 billion, a 15-percent increase from its P48.8-billion budget in 2012. Bulk of this amount, at P44.3 billion, will support the coverage of 3.8 million indigent households under the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, from the targeted 2.3 million households this year.

The 2013 budget also provides increased outlays for safe and affordable housing for informal settlers, especially those living in danger zones, as well as for police, military and other uniformed personnel.

An estimated total of 103,000 households will benefit from a total P26.63 billion outlays for housing and community mortgage programs of the National Housing Authority and the National Home Mortgage and Finance Corp.

“But these figures would be meaningless if we did not define the key principles and strategies that shaped this proposed Empowerment Budget,” Abad said.

Abad pointed out that the first and primary principle is the Aquino administration’s greater and deeper commitment to its social contract with the people. –Fernan J. Angeles, Daily Tribune