Had the legislators been true to their mandate, the yearly budget schedule would not have a problem and the economy would have hummed to its robust momentum.

Fiscal health is assured with two budgets operating during the entire 2020 with the extended 2019 budget and the 2020 General Appropriations Bill (GAB) that is expected to be signed early January, a phenomenon which would be a first for the government.

Last 26 December, President Rodrigo Duterte signed a law extending the availability of the 2019 national budget until the end of 2020 to assure the full use of the spending plan that was delayed by about four months due to the sticky issue of pork barrel.

Both chambers of Congress have denied having dipped their sinister hands into the appropriations measure to insert lump sums that the Supreme Court had outlawed, but still the debates resulted to the gross delay which impacted on the growth momentum of the economy.

The extended budget provides President Duterte with elbow room to comb through the GAB for next year without risking the displacement of government projects, as the fiscal managers now partly use a cash-based scheme in which government funds revert to the National Treasury if not consumed within a fiscal year.

The cash method was also heavily assailed by members of Congress since it limited the yearly allocation’s potential for pork barrel.

The Department of Budget and Management (DBM), nonetheless, indicated that 95.3 percent of the P3.662 trillion 2019 budget were disbursed until September, which means that almost the entire spending plan has been delivered.

The problem, however, is on applying the amount received by each agency as at least P1.161 trillion remains unobligated under the 2019 plan.

The dispute over the 2019 budget also heavily affected the fiscal strategy as DBM Acting Secretary Wendel Avisado said the full implementation of cash budgeting has been moved to 2022 when the President will step down.

Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia said the government had no choice but to revert to obligations-based budgeting for the reenacted budget due to the four-month delay coupled with the election ban.

Next year will also be a mixture of obligation and cash budgeting to further cushion the impact on the economy of the 2019 delay.

The lesson learned is that the internecine feud over pork carries the price of the whole nation suffering from a delay in the budget approval. This should never be allowed to happen again.

It is plain that attempts in Congress, through both chambers, to satisfy cravings for pork caused the delay in the passage of the spending plan for this year, and maybe next year. The President was able to weed out some P95 billion of such in the 2019 budget through his veto power.

Now, it is estimated that P83 billion will be vetoed and had caused the President to take time in reviewing the measure for next year.

The bottom line is that had the legislators been true to their mandate, the yearly budget schedule would not have a problem and the economy would have hummed to its robust momentum.

All the trouble that the President had to go through in turning the 2020 budget inside out, in extending this year’s budget and the delay in his fiscal plan are all the results of attempts to fend off insatiable greed.