The President’s Men and Women: Second time around for Diokno in DBM

MANILA, Philippines – When Fernando Dayao Jr. heard that his new boss at the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) would be his professor, he knew the country’s finances would be in good hands.

“At school, you can see that he really knows what he is teaching. He is very idealistic and teaches us what is really happening on the ground,” said Dayao, 31, a senior budget specialist at the DBM.

“He is strict in class and very professional, so I guess he will be the same here.”

Benjamin Diokno never thought he would be back in his old office, which he held during the shortened Estrada administration. The 68-year-old Batangueño said he did not personally know President Duterte to begin with.

“I met him personally as director of public affairs of UP School of Economics in Davao. We have this annual year-end trip for our development economics students. We invited him to give brief remarks to the students and he accommodated our request,” Diokno recalled.

That was the only time they met before he got a call from Bong Go, now presidential management staff chief, offering him the budget portfolio.

When he said it was okay, a few minutes later, he got another call from Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, with whom he worked as budget undersecretary under former president Corazon Aquino, confirming he is being considered for the post.

As a professor, Diokno taught his graduate students like Dayao public economics with concentration on fiscal decentralization.

This should not come as a surprise as he was among the people who crafted the Local Government Code of 1991, the bedrock of government decentralization in the country after martial law.

This may also be the reason why Duterte, who is pushing for federalism during the first half of his term, tapped Diokno.

Now, the budget chief is busy leading the inter-agency Development Budget Coordination Committee on crafting the administration’s economic thrust, one that involves devolving spending from Metro Manila to other regions.

He said for the 2017 budget, more allocations would be given to the Visayas and Mindanao, with priorities on infrastructure, agriculture and manufacturing to create jobs.

“We need to sustain growth but at the same time we have to pay attention to the poor majority who are left behind,” Diokno said.

“We need to craft and implement a pro-growth, pro-poor and balanced economic development strategy,” he added.

If his past performance is any basis, not all looks rosy for Diokno. Under Estrada, he saw the deficit widen to as much as 3.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2000.

The year before that, spending surged to a point that it accounted for 18.2 percent of GDP, the highest since 1991, according to budget data.

But Diokno defended this. “We were just coming out of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. We needed to pump prime the economy to shorten the recovery period,” he said.

Even with a higher deficit target on his new term now, Diokno gave assurance that the Philippines will not return to a point where its coffers are running on empty.

“We will make sure that the budget is transparent, that it is growth-oriented, pro-poor and pro-lagging regions,” he said.