The Philippine national budget for the year 2011 is the most articulate instrument of the Aquino administration relative to its plans in the next coming years. The budget document that hopes to be approved before the year ends, further states the continuing trend of government spending, this time in the tune of P1.62 trillion. The greater bulk of this amount, or 78%, is earmarked for foreign and domestic debt interest payments. As in the past, debt servicing has become the primary reason for the enactment of the national budget.
The proposed-to-be-approved 2011 Philippine National Budget is only a virtual reality. Budget estimates are things and imaginings that Congress hopes to see in the nitty-gritty reality. Where will the real money come from? The total amount that must be amassed for actual happy expenditure is only on paper and does not have the color of money, and even so depends so much on the capability of the hallowed Bureaus (Bureau of Internal Revenue, Bureau of Customs, the Bureau of the Treasury, the Bureau of Local Government Finance, and the revenue-raising government agencies) to collect what is expected of them from all taxpayers and other revenue sources.
Aside from being arithmetically systematized, the national budget is also geometric in growth. So much of the budgetary estimates are based on percentage increases on previous years’ actual tax collection and revenue collections vis-à-vis allowances for service and commodity price increases, plus allowances for overhead expenses, plus allowances for bad-debts, plus allowances for natural calamities, plus allowances for over-spending-- a nicer term for graft and corruption in government, plus others.
The realization of the national budget depends largely on the capability of the Chief Executive for look around for funds in the form of aids, grants, financial assistance and dole outs from the IMF-WB, from the US of A, from Asian neighbors, from interested investors, and from all other benevolent financiers. It is an executive prerogative laden with pitfalls and lures that could make or unmake a President as a true leader, as what happened to ex-President Arroyo and the allegedly anomalous NBN-ZTE deal. Aids, grants, and financial assistance, for one, are misnomers—they are the cosmeticized carrot-and-stick of the national economy, with very tough strings tied behind. These are actually loans and loan advances that come in batches with very stringent terms and conditions sine qua non that often serve as built-in compounders, and pro forma conditionalities. Getting into the availability of these loans is the easiest part, while coming out of them is almost next to impossible.
Just as we read this piece, the World Bank has extended a $300,000 grant to the Philippines to be used purposively for assessment of the country’s national roads. Well, sometimes, the President doesn’t really have to go around looking for those funds, they just fall when they are least expected. Aside from the aforementioned assistance, Mr. Aquino was also able to corner a considerable amount from Vietnam during his state visit there. Earlier than that, the Millinneum Challenge Corporation headed by the no less than the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, also granted the Aquino government $434 million purposively for BIR streamlining and Samar Road construction projects. It should be noted that the MCC grant is ‘gratis et amore’ which needs no pay-back. A closer scrutiny of the grant, however, would reveal that it is part of the US counter-insurgency program in the Philippines, a form of aggression and intervention in Philippine domestic affairs. In short, MCC grant is actually an advance payment for any US bungle that may probably ensue.
Normally, as in the past, the estimated budgetary expenditure is never realized, at most it only served as benchmarks for a blue print of a program of government—a program that should not be implied, rather than that, it must be charted in black and white. Fiscal administration in the Philippine setting serves only as a fund raising program in support of the realization of the proposed national budget, reason enough why calendar years are called fiscal years—an unending process of searching for that elusive pot of gold.
But the buck should have stopped dead right here, when we began to realize that we have already lost our capacity to pay those totality of debts that have ballooned and still continues to grow because of foreign and domestic debt interest payments. The national budget has become a scapegoat of fiscal and budget policy makers in favor only of incumbent political leaders. The republican government of the Filipino people through their chosen representatives could not scissor-cut a collect-and-spend plan that is at least realistic, at most we have been spending money before we can even collect them. How? We borrow and take out loans from all sources for the purpose of paying those ever-compounding interests on capital loans. Meanwhile, our OFWs are sweating it out there just to keep the capital inflows coming.
On who budgets toll? They toll on thee.
No comments:
Post a Comment