Deliberations on the 2024 national budget — proposed at P5.768 trillion — reveal what appear to be pork barrel funds embedded in the National Expenditure Program submitted to Congress.
The House leadership, however, has guaranteed that the discretionary funds, which are the nature of pork barrel, will be pared off.
Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez said the House of Representatives will “scrutinize and deliberate” on the budget items before the NEP is passed before the end of the year.
“We will make sure in Congress that every centavo Filipinos pay in taxes is spent wisely and returned to the nation through relevant programs and projects. Every peso that goes to the treasury will go back to benefit the people,” Romualdez vowed.
The early submission of the NEP gives both the House and the Senate enough time to review its many items.
Much of the suspected pork is conveniently tucked into bigger items while the rest are distributed among regional offices to make them less conspicuous.
Among the lump sums in the budget are the P733.2-billion Special Purpose Funds which are considered the “Executive’s” pork barrel for responding to sudden spending requirements.
The NEP defines it as an appropriation to cover expenditures for specific purposes for which recipient agencies have not yet been identified. The proposed SPF budget represents a P219.8-billion increase from the current P513.6-billion allocation.
The Miscellaneous Personnel Benefits Fund, or MPBF, will increase by more than 400 percent or to P135.7 billion next year from P26.6 billion in the 2023 budget.
Under the NEP, the special provisions on the use of the MPBF state that the fund can be used for “deficiencies in authorized salaries, bonuses, allowances, associated premiums and other similar personnel benefits of national government personnel, including the requirements for the filling of and the creation of positions, and compensation adjustments, as may be authorized by law, the President of the Philippines, or the DBM.” Another provision allows the government to hire contractual employees.
Romualdez gave his word that none of the amounts in the record-setting General Appropriations Act would be allocated for buying political patronage.
In several past budget deliberations, it was always the House that was under scrutiny for pork, particularly its top rungs.
Now that the House has received the budget early, it and the Senate have started looking into the details “to make sure that the funds that came from taxpayers will be spent wisely. We have to scrutinize every peso and every centavo that government agencies are seeking,” Romualdez emphasized.
“We want to give our people their money’s worth through the quality education of their children, the building of infrastructure to create jobs, and programs that will lower the cost of products in the market,” Romualdez added.
His assurance to the people provides a safeguard to attempts to reintroduce the system that the Supreme Court had rejected as unconstitutional.
At the moment, Congress is running through every agency’s proposal with a fine-tooth comb, looking for suspicious items that could fall under the definition of pork barrel.
The gauge for the invalid pork barrel is funds that are left to the discretion of those who will spend it, including legislators whose mandate it is to craft laws and not to implement projects.