Budget Advocates Criticize PGMA for Prioritizing Supplemental Budget for 2010 Elections

PGMA’s haste in approving the supplemental budget for the 2010 elections when the national budget has yet to be signed raised eyebrows among social development and budget advocates.

“It is quite ironic that they are already working on a supplemental budget for the elections when the national budget for year 2009 has yet to be signed by the President. What are they supplementing where there is no budget yet?” said Leonor Magtolis Briones, lead convenor of Social Watch Philippines which led the Alternative Budget Initiative (ABI). ABI is globally recognized as one of the best practices in budget advocacy.

“President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has certified the budget on poll automation as ‘very urgent’, yet the loss of lives, loss of opportunities, more hunger and more poverty caused by the delay in the delivery of social services due to the late implementation of the 2009 budget should be most urgent,” said Rene Raya of Action for Economic Reforms (AER), one of the 60 nongovernment organizations comprising the ABI.

“We expect more Filipino families becoming hungry with the rising deficit. Government should immediately work on how it will finance the deficit and reformulate the budget based on the new assumptions to save millions of poor Filipinos,” Briones said. “The signed budget will be meaningless unless they consider the deficit,” the former national treasurer added.

Members of the ABI also called for legislators to exercise their power of the purse by protecting the allocations for critical socioeconomic programs.

“As the national budget is being finalized, we hope that our legislators who are the representatives of the people, make sure that the increase in the allocations for education, health, agriculture and environment which civil society groups lobbied for are not lost as the Executive revises the final budget for 2009,” Raya said.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: INBOX is an archive of press releases, statements, announcements, letters to the editors, and manifestos sent to PinoyPress for publication. Please email your materials to pinoypress @ gmail.com. PinoyPress is not responsible for the content of these materials. The opinion expessed in these items does not reflect those of PinoyPress and its staff. Please refer to our terms of use/disclaimer.