{"id":57473,"date":"2015-07-29T11:49:51","date_gmt":"2015-07-29T03:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=57473"},"modified":"2015-07-29T11:49:51","modified_gmt":"2015-07-29T03:49:51","slug":"abad-2016-budget-is-pork-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/07\/29\/abad-2016-budget-is-pork-free\/","title":{"rendered":"Abad: 2016 budget is pork-free"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Budget<\/a>
Budget Secretary Florencio Abad. Photo courtesy of the World Economic Forum 2014 \/ Fotopedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA — Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said that the 2016 national budget submitted by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) is free of pork barrel funds.<\/p>\n

He added that there are no hidden pork barrel funds in the budget, which could be used by lawmakers to pet their projects and get kickbacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no more pork in this budget,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This is contrary to Sen. Panfilo Lacson’s earlier claims that lump-sum or discretionary funds could still be found in the budget.<\/p>\n

The budget secretary said the Supreme Court already has “prohibited the creation of lump sums, in which after a budget is enacted, the senators or congressmen are allowed to identify where the lump sums go.”<\/p>\n

He defined lump sum as\u00a0\u201cone big fund without any disaggregation, with no specific projects or places identified.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the years, we have been trying to disaggregate and reduce the lump sums in budget in the interest of promoting greater transparency and accountability,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Among the agencies who got the largest share in the budget are:<\/p>\n

Department of Education, P435.9 billion<\/p>\n

Department of Public Works and Highways, P394.5 billion<\/p>\n

Department of National Defense, P172.7 billion<\/p>\n

Department of the Interior and Local Government, P154.5 billion<\/p>\n

Department of Health, P128.4 billion<\/p>\n

Department of Social Welfare and Development, P104.2 billion<\/p>\n

Department of Agriculture, P93.4 billion<\/p>\n

Department of Finance, P55.3 billion<\/p>\n

Department of Transportation and Communication, P49.3 billion<\/p>\n

Department of Environment and Natural Resources, P25.8 billion<\/p>\n

Department of Science and Technology, P18.6 billion<\/p>\n

Abad also described the budget as a “legacy budget” and not an “election budget.”<\/p>\n

\u201cThe campaign period for national positions starts in February. If we\u2019re going to use this budget all in January, that\u2019s impossible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven the procurement process takes four to six months, so with the election ban, how can you fully utilize the budget? You can only fully utilize the budget after the elections \u2026 So it\u2019s very tight. So those claiming this will be used for the elections should look at that,\u201d Abad said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA — Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said that the 2016 national budget submitted by the Department of Budget and Management …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":12006,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,95],"tags":[9324],"class_list":["post-57473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news-ph","tag-lei-fontamillas","mauthors-philippine-canadian-inquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}