MANILA, Philippines - Malacañang welcomed yesterday the ratification of the P3-trillion national budget for 2016, the last annual budget allocation under the Aquino administration.
The administration has managed to deliver the budget on time in its nearly six years in office, trim wasteful spending, plug budget leakages and make the budget information available online, Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said in a statement.
“We are happy to hear of Congress’ ratification of the 2016 national budget, capping as it does the Department of Budget and Management’s hard work,” he said.
“This (2016) budget will be the final one created under the Aquino administration, and one that is vastly different from the budgets that were created before President Aquino’s term.”
Abad said “this new era of budgeting” brought about government’s “genuine relationships with civil society groups as we included them in the budget process,” aside from the fact that “reforming the budget process proved our commitment to uphold good governance.”
“These reforms range from the President’s social contract in 2012, which made sure the people’s taxes were spent on priority programs; bottom-up budgeting in 2013 that involved communities in the budget process; the performance-informed budget and the General Appropriations Act-as-release document in 2014 that helped improve budget execution; and other reforms that focused resources on 44 of the poorest and most vulnerable provinces in 2015,” he said.
“We’ve also managed to double the national budget since 2010: from P1.6 trillion in 2011 to P1.8 trillion in 2012, P2 trillion in 2013, P2.2 trillion in 2014, P2.6 trillion in 2015, and P3 trillion for 2016.
Abad said the administration was able to collect enough revenues without raising taxes.
“We were able to spend more on social and economic services – demonstrating visible results that helped the public regain their trust in the government once more,” he said. – With Rhodina Villanueva