Palace reassures full cooperation in budget hearings

With Congress slated to start hearings on the proposed P1.64-trillion national budget for 2011 in September, Malacañang reassured lawmakers of its full cooperation in the process even as an independent think-thank warned that the proposed budget is "meant to repay debts." Presidential Communications Operations Office head Herminio Coloma said Saturday they have received the schedules for the hearings and are ready to defend their proposed budget. “Natanggap natin ang schedule. I think starting September sunod-sunod ang budget hearings ng iba’t ibang departamento. Handa tayo makipagtalakayan sa mambabatas para matiyak ang budget natin maging katanggap-tanggap di lang sa kanila kundi sa ating mamamayan," Coloma said on government-run dzRB radio. (We have received the schedule of the hearings. I think there will be regular hearings starting September. We are ready to defend our budgets before lawmakers to make sure the budget is acceptable not only to Congress but also to the people.) Government radio had reported House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. had said Congress is ready to pass the 2011 budget before end-2010. Coloma said the Palace is ready to help lawmakers speed up the process that will pass the budget soonest. “Makikipagtulungan tayo sa ating mambabatas para magkaroon ng budget na magiging instrument sa kaunlaran ng ating bansa," he said. (We will help our lawmakers craft a budget that will be an instrument of national progress.) Last August 24, President Benigno Aquino III submitted to Congress his proposed P1.64-trillion national budget, which Budget secretary Florencio Abad termed a “reform budget." The proposed budget is P104 billion more or 6.8 percent higher than the 2010 budget, Abad said. Meant to keep repaying debt? Meanwhile, independent think tank IBON Foundation criticized the P1.64-trillion proposed budget, saying it was crafted to let government keep repaying debt. "The P1.645-billion [national government] budget for 2011 is a P104.4-billion or 6.8%-increase from the proposed budget for 2010. However most of this increase is accounted for by the large P80.9 billion increase in interest payments on debt to P357.1 billion. This is the largest absolute increase in interest payments in the country’s history and, at a 29.2% increase from the year before, is the second largest percentage increase after the 32.6% growth in 2000," it said. Government is proposing to pay for this by retreating from its responsibilities in key areas, IBON noted, adding that this results in the proposed budget being “inconsistent with long-term economic and social development." "The government has used its fiscal crisis – invoking revenue constraint – as an excuse to shirk its larger responsibilities to use the national budget, among other policy tools, to direct the country’s social and economic development," the think thank group explained. In the absence of a “progressive revenue system that taxes those with the greatest ability to pay and direct spending to those most in need," IBON said, government debt will continue to rise and “its budgets will fail to meet the people’s real immediate and long-term needs." The group also noted a large 9.5% drop in the budget for economic services, from P398.9 billion in 2010 to P361.1 billion in 2011. It said the budget contractions are particularly large in the sectors of: agriculture and agrarian reform (falling by P23.1 billion or 26.0%), communication, roads and other transportation (P7.9 billion or 5.2%), water resources development and flood control (P4 billion or 21.4%), and power and energy (P3.4 billion or 65.5%). "This alarmingly creates the justification for the further privatization of critical public infrastructure, even as diminishing government engagement undermines its capacity to regulate," IBON said. In social services, the already insufficient health budget falls even further by 3.5% from P40 billion to P38.6 billion, it explained, noting that the government cannot even “approach the same level of real per capita health spending that reached its peak in 1997." However, IBON welcomed the P31.1-billion or 12.9% increase in the education budget which is earmarked for building much-needed new classrooms and hiring of additional teachers.—LBG/JV, GMANews.TV