Friday, March 14, 2008 Roperos: Mind boggling By Godofredo M. Roperos Politics Also
WHEN I came across the story in the front page of a national daily the other day, I almost lost my balance in disbelief that our country is now operating on more than a trillion peso annual budget. It is an enormous budget in the eyes of one who is from the countryside and used to living in “hundred peso terms.”
This country has indeed come a long way. Well, the global economy has come a long way, in the first place. From the time when the price of gasoline was in centavo terms to the present P40 a liter, such distance, if expressed in kilometers, would be truly tremendous.
What I am trying to say is that there was a time when the country was able to operate on a budget that was hardly P200 million. When I was in high school towards the start of the ‘50s, one of the most celebrated scam during the Quirino administration was the so-called Buenavista-Tambobong Estate.
The amount involved? It was only P550 thousand, and drove Elpidio Quirino out of the Palace.
The General Appropriations Act of 2008 is spread out to finance government operations for one year.
The Department of Education gets the biggest slice with more that P140 billion, followed by the Department of Interior and Local Government with P90 billion, then the Public Works and National Defense departments, and on down the line to the health and agriculture departments.
But taking the current issue on graft and corruption in government, having in mind the on-going controversy over the national broadband network overpricing case, one may wonder if the corruption that has placed the Philippines in No. 1 position as the most corrupt in our part of Southeast Asia would not be able to take a good share of the budgetary appropriations for such notorious Cabinet departments as finance, public works and highways, and transportation and communications. Customs and BIR are with finance.
The point I am trying to bring out here is that given the present situation in government agencies where graft and corruption has become a sine qua non in their respective operations, how much of the total 2008 budget would really go to the projects and programs where the amount was originally intended, and how much would go to personal pockets of certain people, including the so-called guest relations ladies of cocktail lounges and gambling casinos?
These scenarios are standard in our contemporary life.
