Chiz vows to scrutinize department budgets

MANILA, Philippines - Sen. Francis Escudero, who has resigned as chairman of the Senate finance committee, yesterday said he will scrutinize to the last detail the allocation of every agency under the P3-trillion proposed General Appropriations Act for 2016.

Escudero said department heads that will go to face Congress for approval of their funds should itemize their requests and keep the budget errors to a minimum.

He asked the department chiefs “to come prepared” because the senators will be asking for a justification of the major items in their budget proposal. This will include presenting the formula used in coming up with the budget request.

Escudero also called on the Department of Budget and Management, which consolidates all proposals into one national budget bill.

“The sentiment in the House of Representatives is to ask for a bill of particulars for every block grant. The second is to call for a zero-error budget or at least keep the mistakes low,” he said.

For department heads asking for a budget to hire more people, Escudero said they must pinpoint where the potential hirees will be assigned.

Government agencies seeking increase in spending program will be required to break down all the allocations, especially if these are lump sum requests.

“Although it might be impossible to list down all the items, like the names of 4.5 million beneficiaries of the conditional cash transfer (CCT)  in one lump sum account, the agency must show that such a listing exists and is accessible to the public anytime,” he said.    

Escudero added lawmakers will also demand a “price list” for common infrastructure projects in order to set a costing standard.

He recalled that in the past, the DBM included in its annual budget submission to Congress the information on unit cost of a kilometer of national road, linear meter of a bridge and classroom of a given size.

“In this system, we would know the budget of every project. If there are change orders, we could determine if the additional charges are justified,” he said.

Escudero said he is also putting his foot down on what he called the habit of the executive department of sending by installment the corrections to the national budget that its finance officials have proposed.

Known in budgeting parlance as “budget errata,” these alterations to the budget bill “have recently gone beyond correcting typographical or computing errors; they are substantial additions,” he said.

“What I’ve noticed lately is that budget errata coming from the DBM are no longer spell-check or editing concerns, or one decimal point gone astray,” he said.

“This is not a simple mistake but a substantial amendment of the budget bill. If there was zero-based budgeting, it should come up with zero error since you’re starting from scratch unlike in the past when it was incremental budgeting in which increases were just piled up on the previous GAA.”

Should the DBM submit errata notices to the Senate finance panel, Escudero said he would ask the budget department to provide the same to all senators.

The DBM should also provide each and every member of the House of Representatives a copy of the errata they have transmitted, he said.    

Budget officials led by Secretary Florencio Abad presented documents comprising the administration’s P3-trillion spending request for 2016 to House officials on Tuesday, with President Aquino’s budget message as cover letter.