Putting discipline in sports planning

Here we go again. The Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) is complaining about the miniscule budget of P26 million that the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has recommended that Congress appropriate for PSC for 2006. The PSC says that this amount is way below the P100 million or so it received from Congress last year.

Of course, the PSC did not say there is a supplemental budget as mandated by Republic Act 6847. These additional sums come from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor), which should be about P100 million, and an estimated P60 million from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO). There are other sources but getting them from the agencies concerned will be like pulling hen’s teeth out since a number of them are locked up in legal and procedural technicalities.

This reduction in the sports budget was to be expected and should have therefore been anticipated and planned for in the short, medium and long term.

It is clear that like any organization, the PSC will have fixed and variable expenses. The fixed expenses are, for example, salaries and wages of all employees and all benefits attached to the latter. Allowances that are given to athletes are both fixed and variable in the sense that PSC is mandated to provide allowances to athletes (that makes it fixed) but the numbers and amounts will vary depending on whatever policy is laid down by PSC, in consultation with the National Sports Associations (NSAs), on the grant of allowances and benefits to athletes (that makes it variable).

On the other side of the coin, the PSC’s revenues or receipts are also both fixed and variable. The fact that the PSC is to be given by Congress a certain yearly appropriation makes the revenue fixed but the amount will vary as the fiscal managers will recommend. The funds coming from both Pagcor and PCSO are also mandated by law and that makes funds from both sources fixed but the amounts vary based on these offices’ own revenue performance.

Based on the above crude and simple analysis of the so-called logic of PSC finances, it is clear that one has to identify those fixed expenses and make sure that there are corresponding fixed revenues to fund them. In the same way, the variable expenses can be funded by variable income and never by fixed income. These variable expenses can increase or decrease depending on the policies laid down and the political will to impose them.

Recently, we are told that the PSC has asked athletes to be more patient. The latter were also told that there is a possibility that athletes’ allowances may be reduced. This is in effect a statement on the hierarchy of the PSC’s priorities, i.e. secure the fixed expenses first and reduce the variable expenses since there’s uncertainty in the variable income (and in certain cases, even the fixed income), as is often the case in government agencies and non profit organizations.

So, what we have here is a challenge that requires, here we go again, strategic planning, as one key solution in a series of steps that the PSC leaders ought to take in order for them to be able to anticipate events. Being able to anticipate events could lessen the possibility of their getting heart attacks and strokes as they move heaven and earth dealing with creditors, paying benefits, responding to political requests, etc. It is very easy to be overwhelmed by one’s pressing present problems and totally forget what lies ahead a year or two from now.

I had long advocated the updating of the Sports Master/Sector Plan that was prepared in 1996 -97 by the PSC in conjunction with the Australian Sports Commission, the Australian Institute of Sports and Price Waterhouse of Australia. The basic reason behind this advocacy is to allow all sports stakeholders to help formulate that plan and for them to have a clearer idea of where both the PSC and the elite sports community (POC, NSAs, etc.) are going for the next few years, how it intends to get there and how the situation will be monitored to help us determine if we got there at all or not.

I have read several news accounts of the PSC launching the so-called Unified Sports Plan. If that is, in a way, updating the master plan prepared almost 10 years ago, I would not really care if they call the doggone thing "Papa Piccolino", as my late professor in logic and Thomistic Philosophy, Dr. Ariston Estrada Sr. would say.

The important thing is to go through the process of clearly defining the purpose of the sports community and the PSC bearing in mind its vision-mission (there was one formulated in 1995-96), even if there is a law that spells out certain purposes; establish realistic goals and how these goals will be achieved given the resources available now and in the foreseeable future.

In short, we need to make basic and fundamental decisions and actions that will provide the road map for the future. I am certain that such a plan which has long been required by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), whose endorsement is needed in convincing the DBM and Congress in budget matters anyway, will go a long way in opening new and creative opportunities for funds from non-traditional sources locally and overseas. Besides, planning is part of good governance.

For as long as we insist in doing the same old thing every year, nothing much will change. There will also be greater possibilities of heart attacks and strokes.