Ombudsman wants budget doubled

MANILA, Philippines – The Office of the Ombudsman wants its budget doubled next year in line with President Arroyo’s declaration in her State of the Nation Address of an intensified drive against high-level corruption.

“We would welcome any fund infusion into the Office of the Ombudsman. Our recruitment of new lawyers and prosecutors continues so there’s a need for more funds,” spokesman Jose de Jesus Jr. told The STAR.

“We also need to expand our facilities. The reason why we have not been intensive in our recruitment is because we have limited space for our lawyers,” De Jesus said.

For this year, the budget for the Office of the Ombudsman stands at P953,627,000. Officials want it raised to P1.852 billion next year.

De Jesus said a bigger budget would help the Ombudsman “harness talents and competence of investigators and prosecutors.”

In her SONA speech, Mrs. Arroyo commended the anti-graft agency for increasing its conviction rate by 500 percent.

She said the Department of Budget and Management created the Procurement Transparency Group in September last year and linked with business, academe and the Church “to monitor compliance with anti-graft mechanisms and deter or catch anomalies in awarding public contracts and other procurement irregularities.”

She said the customs and internal revenue bureaus also established similar tie-ups with civil society groups for more efficient gathering of corruption information and monitoring of tax evasion and smuggling cases.

She said the efforts earned praises from the US-based Millennium Challenge Corp. which contributed P1 billion to the nation’s anti-graft initiatives. – With Reinir Padua