It is dishonest of the Arroyo government to seek aid of US$74 million (or some 3.5 billion pesos) for disaster relief from the international community when it sitting on 140 billion pesos (or nearly US$3,000 million) in impounded savings from the 2008 budget.
140 billion pesos is 40 times more than what it is begging for unnecessarily. It can simply ask Congress to realign a portion of this amount in order to meet the three-month emergency relief spending required to assist the most needy survivors of the recent disasters.
And it doesn’t make sense for Congress either to work on a supplemental budget of 10 billion pesos for relief and rehabilitation, an amount that will be borrowed and that will raise further the fiscal deficit, precisely because there is this unspent money from 2008, which is 14 times more than the supplemental amount it is contemplating and which is within its power to reallocate.
Why should the government beg and borrow when there is more than enough savings to cover the needs for disaster relief and rehabilitation? Why is Gloria sitting on this huge amount and keeping it unreleased, especially in a time of great need? (Read the details from the columns of Prof. Liling Briones of the Alternative Budget Initiative/Social Watch Philippines).
Congress should do its job and exercise its power of check over executive spending by prying open the black box of presidential discretionary budgets, unlimited funds juggling, and unaudited expenditures, which comprise over 50 percent of the more than a trillion budget, or some 700 to 800 billion pesos annually.
There is no such a thing as impenetrable spending as executive privilege.
Each centavo of public money—how it is raised, distributed, re-distributed, used, and spent—should be open to public scrutiny and subject to audit. EACH centavo.
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UPDATE on this (15 October 2009):
Congress approved a P12 billion calamity fund, which will be sourced from the government’s share of the proceeds from the Malampaya gas project in Palawan. Social Watch Philippines supports the move.
