MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Sports Commission is finalizing the budget for all national sports associations for 2018.
The past couple of weeks, PSC executive director Sannah Frivaldo sat down with NSA representatives who were asked to present their budget proposals for next year.
Ramirez said they already have a figure in mind, an amount that should be enough to fund the programs of each of the 40-plus NSAs getting financial support from the government. Only a dozen NSAs have yet to submit their budget requirements.
“We are allocating P600 million for all NSAs. There will be NSAs that will be needing P40 million next year while others will be getting P30 million, P20 million or P10 million,” said the chairman.
The NSAs will have to justify their requests based on performance, and once approved, the money will be made available to the NSAs from January to December next year.
To make sure the process runs smoothly, the PSC has reinforced its accounting department, and has hired a couple more lawyers to help in the disbursement of the funds.
“We will announce the budget of the NSAs to the public. So, the public will know how much each sport is getting. And if they don’t deliver the medals, the public will be the ones to ask them why they could not deliver,” said Ramirez.
Traditionally, athletics and aquatics receive the biggest annual budget from the PSC, and sports like weightlifting and judo the smallest amount.
“We don’t want to call it budget deliberations but budget conversations. It was good to hear what the NSAs need. They were in fact educating us. It was a very good understanding. We are here to support them,” Ramirez added.
Starting next year, Ramirez said NSAs that deliver medals in international competitions, will receive bigger support.
“This is the practice in other countries, including the United States.,” the PSC chief said.