MANILA, Philippines — From mass housing to irrigation and construction of public hospitals, daunting responsibilities would start to get turned over to local government units by the Duterte administration starting next year.
Work has started on President Rodrigo Duterte’s final budget, an outlay he would turn over to his successor in the middle of next year and one that would continue bankrolling this year’s pandemic response programs.
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But a bigger change looms as the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) instructs national government agencies to devolve crucial functions to cities, municipalities and provinces in 2022, and therefore “refrain from including in their proposals funding” for these projects, the agency said in the 2022 budget call.
The instruction is consistent with the programmed implementation of the so-called “Mandanas ruling” next year. That 2018 Supreme Court ruling, named after petitioner and Batangas Governor Hermilando Mandanas, changed the formula at how the state should compute the national revenue share of local government units to include not only internal taxes, but also Customs duties.
Following the high court order, DBM said LGUs will indeed receive a “substantial increase” in their so-called internal revenue allotments next year, but likewise hands them bigger obligations to fulfill to their constituencies. National agencies, in turn, are relegated to oversight functions as well as when needed, subsidizing poorer municipalities under the 5th and 6th classes based on income.
“The NGA (national government agencies) shall focus on policy and standards development of service delivery, provision of technical assistance, monitoring and performance assistance of LGUs,” National Budget Memorandum 138 released Friday said.
The shift will be “gradual” and therefore next year, some state agencies can still allocate money to some projects, Budget Undersecretary Laura Pascua said in a Viber message. Nevertheless, the responsibilities to be transferred can be formidable. Apart from mass housing and irrigation, building hospitals in communities will soon just be the task for provinces, not the Department of Health.
Medicine supplies in clinics will now be taken care of by municipalities. Meanwhile, Budget Assistant Secretary Rolando Toledo said the DOH will focus resources in building specialty hospitals.
Local roads and bridges, which typically are pet projects of legislators that get funded through the budget, will now be solely administered by provinces and municipalities as well. So are provincial buildings, freedom parks and other similar facilities, as well as jails. Their maintenance will be funded by municipalities.
Smaller projects like building of tourism infrastructure as well as traffic facilities like road signs and traffic lights will also now be delegated to provinces and cities.
Beyond tangible items, the social welfare department will be handing down to LGUs the obligation of providing assistance to rebel returnees, population management programs, and even relief operations.
“NGAs shall also treat LGUs as partners in development and consider cost-sharing arrangements in the implementation of devolved projects,” DBM said.
Under the revised medium-term plan released last December, the government is proposing P5.024 trillion as budget for next year, 11.5% up from this year’s level and equivalent to 22.2% of economic output.