Ultimate transparency now

Ultimate transparency now | Daily Tribune

It is estimated that the unprogrammed appropriations (UA) in the yearly national budgets have totaled P1 trillion in the past three years, which is about the same amount of pork barrel insertions. Thus, the campaign to erase the UA in the budget is all about the war against the unconstitutional pork barrel.

Activist groups in the House of Representatives cited a compelling reason to remove the UA since the DBM, through it, has hijacked the power of the purse that belongs to Congress.

“The DBM assumed a lot of authority in terms of the approval and release of the funds that are parked under this very controversial, this very complicated source of corruption in the budget,” Akbayan Rep. Perci Cendaña said.

The Palace’s defense is that the UA is needed for emergency purposes, but Cendaña pointed out that the Office of the President has a contingency fund of P13 billion to address the effects of calamities and other emergencies.

The President also has P31 billion in calamity funds, “and if they need more, they can always pass a supplemental budget.”

The call to strike the UA from the General Appropriations Act should be taken as a response to the pork barrel amid the perversion of the 2025 GAA, which has gone down in history as the most corrupt budget ever.

Filipinos are calling for transparency in the budget, which can only be achieved if the items are all programmed and scrutinized by Congress against the UA, which are usually lump sum amounts.

Cendaña said the majority of the House will likely junk the proposal, but he said that “we are going to still push for it really hard come the period of amendments.”

Budget watchdogs have been demanding that the DBM and the House appropriations committee explain the existence of foreign-assisted projects (FAPs) in the UA, which is incongruent with the priority that it should be given.

FAPs are flagship projects funded through official development assistance (ODA) loans with highly concessional terms.

“What happens if additional revenues are not raised, which is a condition for a program to be implemented under the UA; it means we will still have to pay the commitment fees. Every year that a foreign assistance project is delayed, that’s another year that we will have to pay the commitment fees,” the partylist lawmaker said.

Placing the FAPs in the UA has President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. eating his words before the investor community about the importance of the key infrastructure that the country sorely lacks.

“To be frank about it, he’s the one who’s embarrassed. He has been courting these investors to lend money,” Cendaña said.

Davao City Rep. Sid Ungab had exposed the ODA projects that were relegated to the UA to create fiscal space for pork barrel items. It has become a source of embarrassment for the country, which should follow a strict timeline agreed on with the lenders.

Despite the vow of the DBM to reduce the UA, it remains at P238 billion in the proposed 2026 budget, which is bigger than the budgets of either the Department of Transportation or the Department of Agriculture.

The threat from the UA, however, is that as long as it exists, the pork barrel will remain since it provides a parking lot for items sideswiped by the pet projects of legislators.

All the maneuvers to create the pork barrel, including the blank items and the insertions in the bicameral conference committee, involve the UA, thus, it provides the lifeline for the corruption involving the budget.

There is no excuse not to end it.