Drilon to defend P21-B CCT fund

MANILA, Philippines –  Senate committee on finance chairman Franklin Drilon has vowed to keep intact the P21-billion budget of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) for its conditional cash transfer (CCT) program for 2011 despite threats from his colleagues to slash the amount.

Drilon said there would be no compromise figure as far as the CCT budget is concerned, but he would instead make sure that proper safeguards would be in place to ensure all the funds would be used properly.

“Yes, the budget of P21 billion will be there but do not forget that this is just an authorization,” he said.

“This is not something that will be released in January, this will be in tranches and we will exercise the oversight powers of the committee on finance and oversight committee on public expenditures to monitor the implementation of this program,” he added.

The P21-billion CCT budget of the DSWD is expected to be one of the thornier issues that would be debated during the Senate’s deliberation on the proposed P1.645-trillion national budget for 2011.

The very same appropriation was questioned by the minority bloc at the House of Representatives during its own deliberations on the budget, primarily because of concerns about the absorption capacity of the DSWD.

House committee on appropriations chairman Joseph Emilio Abaya said they were able to hurdle this obstacle by introducing the creation of an oversight committee on the implementation of the CCT and a provision for the realignment of savings to the construction of school buildings, health facilities and providing immunization for infants.

Abaya said the provision for the realignment of the funds was incorporated in their version of the 2011 budget.

“It’s now built into the budget law so the executive has to comply. If there are unspent funds, it can only be spent on additional classrooms, health facilities and immunization. So that is clear, they can’t realign that elsewhere,” he said.

Abad: Give CCT a chance

Senators Edgardo Angara and Francis Escudero have both criticized the allocation of such a huge amount of funds to the DSWD for a single program.

The P21 billion for the CCT was a huge jump from the current P10 billion and according to Angara, the DSWD does not have the capacity to undertake such a huge program at the moment.

He said he would push for a reduction to P15 billion while Escudero wants it down to P6 billion only.

Budget Secretary Florencio Abad called on all sectors, including critics of the move of the President, to increase the CCT budget to give the administration a chance to implement the program.

Abad said the safeguards introduced by the House as well as the proposal of Sen. Ralph Recto to have a periodic review of the implementation of the project to see the absorptive capacity of the DSWD were all acceptable.

Recto proposed that a report be given on the implementation of the CCT program after six months and if it is determined that the DSWD is unable to fully utilize the funds, then these would be realigned to other sectors.

Drilon, Abaya and Abad were all part of yesterday’s Open Budget Partnership forum convened by Sen. Teofisto Guingona III at the Discovery Suites in Pasig City.

The forum was attended by members of civil society, the academe and non-government organizations involved in transparency and accountability in the public sector.

An agreement was signed among the legislators, Abad (representative of the executive branch) and Dr. Leonor Briones and Nieves Osorio (for civil society) to provide full access to government budget information for all Filipino citizens and to increase the capacity of ordinary citizens in understanding the budget.

“Whether by design or chance, the budget has become incomprehensible and inaccessible even to many in government and this situation must be reversed,” Guingona said.

He said every citizen must have their say in how the government spends their money.

“For myself, they represent nothing less than empowerment and responsibility, the very foundations of a free society and a functioning democracy,” he added.

Briones, a former Treasury secretary and now convenor of the Alternative Budget Initiative, lamented that the budget process is not entirely transparent in spite of the claims by Congress.

She said budget accountability continues to be in what she called “unchartered territory.”

Former Department of Finance undersecretary Milwida Guevarra, who is now chair of the Synergia Foundation, said there is a lack of certainty as to how the administration would address the budget deficit.

As an example, Guevarra said the administration has no policy direction on the excise tax on tobacco and alcohol or sin taxes.

She said the government could easily generate an additional P43 billion in revenue immediately just by raising taxes on cigarettes, but this cannot be done for some reason.