Malacañang won't seek supplemental budget

Malacañang won't ask for supplemental money from Congress even though only 38.4 percent of the P1.54-trillion budget for 2010 is left in the national coffers. "I don't think the president is prepared to submit a supplemental budget," said Budget Secretary Florencio "Butch" Abad in a press briefing Tuesday. Abad said President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III can use P100 billion in the remaining budget for 2010 deficit to spend on social services such as education and health care. The P100 billion would come from the discretionary portion of the P591.4-billion budget left by the Arroyo administration as of June 30. The discretionary amount could be culled from capital outlay, maintenance funds and other operating expenses, and funds allotted to government agencies that hurdle performance reviews. The administration was also looking at the P62.1 billion allotted to congressional initiatives, or "categorical congressional insertions," because government monitoring showed that some of the insertions may be used despite the President’s veto message saying that the projects lawmakers inserted in the budget appropriations can't be funded "until Congress is able to identify new sources of revenue," Abad said. "Based on our monitoring of these funds, it appears there have been releases made of a significant magnitude which is really in violation of the veto message," he added. Abad said last week that the deficit ceiling of P178.5 billion in the first half was breached because of "surprise" expenditures, some of which could be traced to congressional initiatives, made by the administration of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, now Pampanga Second District representative, in its last days in office. The Aquino administration is also looking into the P105 million in calamity funds allotted to Pampanga's Second District to see if the money has been obligated, or if the contracts for projects that are supposed to benefit from the allocation have gone through the bidding process. Abad noted that P105 million in calamity funds were allotted to the second district when the third and fourth districts are the low-lying areas susceptible to flooding and other disasters in times of calamities. If there are no winning bidders yet, the Special Allotment Release Order can still be recalled and the funds reallocated to other priority services, he said. Earlier Monday, Arroyo spokesperson Elena Bautista-Horn confirmed that P105 million was indeed allocated to the second district but denied that the money was used for Arroyo’s congressional campaign. "May P105 million na na-allot. Totoo naman yan... Pero di pa nadi-disburse ang pera. The money is intact. Huwag nila sabihing ginamit sa election (There were P105 million allotted. That’s true. But the money has not yet been disbursed. It's intact. They shouldn't say it was used for the election)," she said. She added that the allotment order was issued only on May 27, or days after the May 10 elections. “How can the money be used for election purposes?" The money was supposed to pay for the rehabilitation of agriculture and infrastructure damages wrought by Storm Ondoy and Typhoon Pepeng in October 2009. Abad said that of the P104.5 billion calamity fund already released for 2010, only P5 million went to Pangasinan – the province most devastated by Pepeng – while Rizal, which suffered the most from Ondoy, was not included in the releases for 2010. Other provinces received between P10 million and P60 million for rehabilitation efforts. —VS, GMANews.TV