Lacson questions ‘bloated’ infra budget

SEN. Panfilo Lacson on Monday said there was a “whopping” P532 billion in questionable appropriations in the proposed P4.506-trillion national budget for 2021.

He bared that after reviewing the budget proposal of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), he found out that the “re-appropriation” of infrastructure projects had ballooned to P532 billion from the initial P469 billion.

“Considering the projects under ‘operations’ in the proposed budget of the DPWH, which has total appropriations of P613.1 billion, easily 87 percent or P532.3 billion is deemed questionable,” he said.

The initial P73.5 billion covering 2,933 items has now bloated to P135.8 billion involving 5,913 projects, Lacson said.

Lump sums, meanwhile, amounted to P396.4 billion, he added.

“Having said all that, a legal question needs to be addressed as we progress in our plenary budget deliberations,” the senator said in a text message.

“Will this kind of ‘errata’ be allowed by the Senate, or Congress for that matter, if the items to be rectified do not involve simple typo[graphical] errors or other similar minor errors like interchanged or misplaced items in the NEP (National Expenditure Program)?”

Without the overblown appropriations, the 2021 General Appropriations Act could be slashed by more than half a trillion pesos, he said.

The questionable items in the DPWH budget was already reflected under the 2020 P4.1-trillion national budget. “And then we found out that that these were again included in the 2021 NEP,” he said.

“So, I raised the red flag on this. And [Budget] Secretary [Wendel] Avisado was candid enough to admit there’s indeed an error and he will correct it by asking DPWH to submit to him [the correct figures] so he can submit to Congress the errata,” Lacson said in a television interview on Friday.

He bared that his source in the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) told him that the reason for the hasty submission of the erroneous appropriations for the 2021 NEP was that the DPWH was late in submitting its budget proposal.

“For what reason I don’t know. We can suspect that there was a lot of haggling that went on between DPWH and some legislators,” Lacson said.

Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon also asked DBM to submit to his office the top 10 programs, activities and projects that were discontinued as a result of realignments to fund the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act or Bayanihan Act 1.

Drilon also asked DBM officials how much of the total authorized budget, including those from the Bayanihan Act 1, had been released.

He said he was informed that as of last August, over P3.923 trillion had been released, or 95.7 percent of the P4.1 trillion outlay.

These are the combined releases of the continuing appropriations under the 2019 and 2020 national budgets and releases pursuant to Bayanihan to Heal as One Act, DBM officials said during the virtual 2021 proposed budget deliberations Monday.

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Article and Photo originally posted by Manila Times last September 15, 2020 and written by Bernadette E. Tamayo.

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