Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto has clarified that the P3-billion surplus or savings of the local government should not be considered an accomplishment.

According to him, the government should not hoard money and that this should be released to help people and to grow the economy.

“It is true that Pasig has had big savings, but it’s more important to understand why,” Sotto said in a Facebook post.

Sotto emphasized that the city government saves a lot of money because of the fight against corruption, especially on the procurement reform.

“To keep it short, the main reason is that because of true open bidding and no kickbacks, prices go down. What was previously P100 million can now be done for P80 million or even lower,” he said.

Sotto also noted that the local government is not yet 100 percent in keeping up with the absoptive capacity due to the sudden increase in the budget.

“The absorptive capacity is to capability of a local government unit to use the funds properly. Our annual budget doubled in five years from around P10 billion to P20 billion. Our expenditures (social services, other services, salaries, and infra) have also almost doubled, but not quite (very rough estimate from P9 billion to P16 billion),” Sotto said.

“A secondary factor here are the long-term reforms we have introduced, from planning to procurement to implementation,” the mayor added.

Sotto, who is now on his third and final term as local chief executive, also acknowledged that the city did not inherit debt from previous administration.

The son of award-winning actress Coney Reyes and ace comedian Vic Sotto, the young mayor has ended the 27-year rule of the Eusebio clan when he defeated Mayor Robert “Bobby” Eusebio in the 2019 midterm elections.

“With regard to debt, to be fair to the previous local administration, we did not inherit debt in 2019. Income generation was always their priority, to the point that even traffic enforcers had quotas,” Sotto said.

“Pasigueños may also remember the big tarps they posted thanking them for the P15 billion cash-in-bank they left behind... but of course this was misleading, since the P15 billion was mostly a combination of continuing appropriations, accounts payable, and savings due to most plantilla positions being left vacant. But still, we give credit where credit is due,” he added.