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The
Senate, voting 14-0, on Tuesday night passed on third
and final reading the Palace-certified P1.23-trillion
budget bill for 2008 after adopting last-minute
amendments by minority senators to slash Malacañang’s
Kilos Asenso pork barrel by at least P500 million and
reallocating the amount to the Department of Health and
the Department of Education.
Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, finance
committee chairman and principal sponsor of the budget
bill, also accepted a proposal to include a special
provision on unprogrammed funds that savings from
foreign-exchange improvements should likewise be
allocated to health and education programs.
The bicameral conference committee will
now reconcile the House and Senate versions of the
national budget that Congress leaders are looking to
submit to President Arroyo for signing into law before
the Christmas recess.
Senate President Manuel Villar Jr. said
the budget’s early passage after three weeks of marathon
deliberations in the chamber “mirrors our resolve to set
fiscal directions for 2008 in pursuit of meaningful
programs addressing the needs of our country and
citizens.”
Villar added this emphasizes “our call
for the strictest accountability of government funds,
which must serve their rightful purpose.”
The Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC)
welcomed the decision of Enrile to restore the House’s
special provision in the 2008 national government
budget, suspending interest payments for questionable
and fraudulent loans “pending renegotiation or
condonation or both.”
FDC president Ana Maria Nemenzo said the
Senate move is a step in the right direction, but is
still not enough to provide more funds for essential
services like education and health. “These essential
services deserve even greater attention and increases
this time, considering that they have been deprived of
adequate support in the past years.”
The special provision in the House-
approved budget bill stated that “no amount shall be
used for the payment of interest payments on debts which
are challenged as fraudulent, wasteful or useless or
both, like but not limited” to what FDC labeled as
illegitimate debts.
These loans include the Austria Medical
Waste Project, Small Coconut Farms Development Project
and Telepono sa Barangay Project, among others.
The big-ticket items in the approved
budget bill included Department of Education (DepEd),
P138 billion; Department of Public Works and Highways,
P90.72 billion; National Defense, P50.9 billion;
Department of Agriculture, P26.8 billion; Transportation
and Communications, P19 billion; Health, P16.5 billion;
Judiciary, P10.6 billion; and Foreign Affairs, P10.18
billion.
Villar said that under the DepEd budget,
P2 billion has been allotted for the repair of school
buildings, P760 million to cover the backlog of
classrooms, P420 million for school seats and P330
million to hire new teachers.
He added that an increase in the
allocation for the prevention and control of infectious
diseases under the DOH budget has also been provided.
The budget of the Office of the Solicitor General was
likewise raised by P81 billion for the implementation of
reforms instituted by law in their structure and
organization.
The Bureau of Jail Management and
Penology also received P557.033 million for the
subsistence allowance of 78,306 prisoners at P60 per day
that is an increase from the P30, and P83.555 medical
allowance that at present is P3 per day.
The budget of state universities and
colleges was also augmented by P163.57 million for
research and development, new academic programs and
additional classrooms and student dormitories.
The judiciary also got an additional
P250 million to strengthen the system, provide judiciary
incentives and give citizens better access to lawyers.
The debt watchdog FDC earlier expressed
its serious disappointment over the decision of Enrile
to restore P12.1 billion worth of repayments for
questionable loans and slash P4.2 billion from the
House-approved budget for health services in the Senate
version.
The House budget bill, HB 2454, was
praised for taking bold steps in addressing debt-service
payments and earmarking an additional P17.8 billion for
important social services like education and health.
This amount was sourced from more than
P6 billion worth of savings as a consequence of a
favorable peso-dollar exchange rate and about P11
billion worth of suspended interest payments for debts
challenged by FDC as illegitimate.
The Senate restored, however, these cuts
“to provide more legroom for the payment of interest on
so-called tainted or fraudulent loans” and identified
P5.7 billion worth of savings from favorable
foreign-exchange rate.
“Contrary to Senator Enrile’s fear,
there is enough legroom for renegotiation if both the
Senate and House of Representatives peg the peso-dollar
assumption at a more realistic rate and if they stop the
arbitrary allocation of interest payments for proposed
loans and projects. In fact, we are talking of P18.86
billion worth of legroom here, more than enough of the
P17.8-billion House cut,” said Nemenzo.
She said the Executive branch allotted
$2.27 billion as interest payments for foreign debts,
pegging its assumption of the peso-dollar exchange rate
at $1=P48, while the House set it at $1=P45, resulting
in P6.8 billion in reduction. “If we peg the peso-dollar
exchange rate at $1=P42, then we will have P13.8 billion
in savings.”
According to the FDC, government
earmarked $40.25 million as interest payments for
proposed program loans and $75 million for proposed
bonds next year. It also allocated P5.26 billion for
proposed project loans with interest payments.
“All in all, we would be paying $120.5
million or P5.06 billion [at $1=P42] for interest
payments for these proposed loans alone. These interest
payments can possibly be stricken out together with
interest payments for illegitimate debts because it is
not covered by the automatic- appropriations provision,
which only mandates automatic appropriation for
existing, not future or planned, obligations,” said
Nemenzo. |
