‘Government has responsibility to manage resources, idle funds’

MANILA, Philippines — The government has a responsibility to manage resources, including tapping idle funds to benefit a greater number of Filipinos, Finance Secretary Ralph Recto said.

In a statement, Recto said that it is important for the government to mobilize unused and idle funds such as that of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) to provide the needs of over 115 million Filipinos.

Recto argued that idle funds could be tapped to finance priority government health, education and infrastructure programs.

Recto even compared the mobilization of unused funds to idle police who were at a police station when they were needed in crime-ridden areas.

“For example, there are a lot of crimes on the street and you have police forces just sleeping in their headquarters, shouldn’t we deploy them to address crimes?” Recto said.

“This is just like the idle PhilHealth funds that should be used and benefited by millions of Filipinos,” he said.

The finance chief emphasized that he acknowledged the concerns about the use of PhilHealth’s unused government subsidy.

But he also noted that the state has the responsibility to manage its resources properly so that it doesn’t resort to more borrowing.

The government currently spends P15.8 billion a day but only collects only P11.8 billion in revenues.

This means that the government needs to borrow P4 billion daily to fund its programs and projects.