ISAFP’s limited budget hampers intelligence work

If the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP) has been having difficulty in carrying out intelligence work, it’s because it has had the same budget for the last eight years, documents at the ISAFP showed.

ISAFP’s intelligence fund for calendar year 2002 remained at P33.601 million, the same allocation it has been getting since 1995.

This was actually P10 million lower than the last recorded high for the intelligence fund which was P43.601 million.

The documents also showed that even ISAFP’s budget for maintenance and operating expenses (MOE) is only a drop in the bucket of the MOE of the entire Armed Forces.

Of the military’s MOE of P8,298,868,000, ISAFP only gets P104,691,557 or 1.246 percent.

The limited resources is not surprising since the overall budget of the Armed Forces for calendar year 2002 is only P46,237,026,000 or only 8.03 percent of the national outlay of P575,123,728,000.

The national intelligence fund, on the other hand, is only P1,211,022,000 or 0.295 percent of the P575,123,728,000 national budget.