The Philippines will be spending the biggest national budget in history according to some analysts as Budget Secretary Butch Abad confirmed on Tuesday that legislators have allocations for their districts in the 2016 budgt, worth P3 trillion. Sec. Abad who represents the Executive Branch of government submitted the 2016 National Expenditure Program to House Speaker Sonny Belmonte at the Batasang Pambansa.
According to the Budget Department, the government can declare savings anytime in the year, similar to the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), which authorized the executive to withdraw and realign savings midyear, but Abad claimed that there is no more pork barrel this year.
The Budget Secretary was quoted as saying “There are allocations for districts depending on their needs and the DPWH [Department of Public Works and Highways] and other agencies in the infrastructure provision. DOTC [Department of Transportation and Communications] and DA [Department of Agriculture] have allocated infrastructure projects in every district in every province in every region. But let me emphasize, there’s the President’s budget message that the focus of the 2016 budget is the 44 priority provinces,” said Abad.
The budget secretary admitted that there are still other lump sums in the budget. However, only three really cannot be disaggregated now–the Calamity Fund, the Contingent Fund, and the Allocations to Local Government Units (ALGUs).
Based upon the 2016 proposed national budget, the Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (DRRM) fund is worth P38.9 billion while the Contingent Fund is P4 billion.
The budget of the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program next year is P62.537 billion from P62.23 billion in 2015. For the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), the government subsidy next year is going to total P29.4 billion.
For Bottom-up Budgeting (BUB), the budget for 2016 is P24.7 billion for 1,500 cities and municipalities.
