Saturday, October 28, 2006 Ong: Getting closer to a pro-people national budget By Ted Aldwin Ong Misreadings
(Part 2)
PRESIDENTIAL Decree 1177 is a law that dictates the automatic payment of the country's principal amortization and interests. This law is one of the main reasons why almost all our government agencies are grappling for bigger allocations. The moment debt servicing reaches 50 percent out of the total 100 percent national budget, everybody suffers.
The worse hit is the marginalized sector that is dependent on government allocations. Social services are compromised because resources are limited and cannot cover even government's program funds.
These foolish provisions unnecessarily constrain government's capacity to provide for vital economic and social services. Alongside, the government automatically appropriates scarce resources for payments of debt that are obviously behest if not onerous. The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant is an example of government's wasteful spending.
Another example of this is the wounding issue of the Marcos debts. As of end of 2005, the Bureau of the Treasury estimated that the national government still has an outstanding obligation amounting to US$783 million of all Marcos debts. We are resolutely paying the interest and principal amortization of these debts despite the fact that these are considered illegitimate and are under contention by the government itself.
In the immediate, the government's fiscal plan must go hand in hand in assessing future indebtedness by reviewing government's growing contingent liabilities especially the executive policy of providing sovereign guarantees even for private corporations.
We must stop appropriating for contingent liabilities that have become actual liabilities due to, by government's admission itself, onerous contracts entered into by the government. A case in point is the Casecnan Project and the controversial P28-billion North Rail Project. These graft-ridden projects must be investigated and the national government must stop giving out its counterpart on these projects.
We have issued our challenge to the Philippine Senate to pass Senate Resolution No. 1 calling for a congressional Debt Audit of all Public Debt and Contingent Liabilities as a vital step in breaking the chains of debt that have impoverished generations of Filipino people.
All in all, the initiative pursued by civil society groups and sincere congresspersons in formulating an alternative 2007 budget is worth commending. For all its modest objectives and reasonableness, the initiative is a welcome respite from the cock and bull story of the Arroyo Government's proposed 2007 budget, a draft budget, like in the previous years, rigorously committed to patronage politics and foreign dictate.
Together with other civil society groups more and more we are calling to all involved sectors particularly like-minded legislators to seriously embark in developing not only an alternative budget against the bankrupt fiscal propositions of the already exposed Arroyo government, but also a genuine peoples' budget that is free from debt, "trapo" politics and foreign interference.
I believe this is the only alternative that will best safeguard and promote the future of our people.
(Comments to tao.ssi@gmail.com)
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