Press Release
February 12, 2009

LOREN LAMENTS MISPLACED PRIORITIES IN NAT'L BUDGET

Senator Loren Legarda has called for an overhaul of the national budgeting process to make it more responsive to the people's urgent needs, like education, health care and food security. In a speech at the University of the Philippines in Manila, Legarda pointed out that P10 billion is lost yearly in the armed conflict in Mindanao based on estimates of the World Bank (2002) and the Philippine Human Development Report (2005).

Debt servicing remains automatic, she said.

This misplaced priority, according to Legarda, is also seen in terms of government spending: P50 plus billion for the defense budget and only P30 billion to the health sector.

"When you don't take care of your people's health, when you deny them the chance to get an education, when you don't prepare enough to ensure food supply and affordability, you push people to take up arms. Give the people of Mindanao the attention and respect their need and you will end the conflict," Legarda said.

Money saved from this shift from the all-out war policy in Mindanao to an all-out war against poverty can be used for research and development, which will the arm the country with advanced knowledge in health and food security.

"If I, as a senator, have the power, I will readily reallocate everything in the budget to make education and health the number one and two priorities of government spending. But it doesn't work that way," Legarda said.

Legarda explained that the budget process, taking cue from a martial law practice, starts with the all-powerful DBCC or a budgetary coordinating committee composed of economic and planning offices of government.

"Congress cannot add or subtract from the draft budget passed on to Congress by DBCC. It can only realign. But with the allocation for debt service inviolable, Congress cannot radically alter the original spending items from the DBCC," she said.

Legarda is pushing for the restoration of the full powers of Congress to enact the budget from the very beginning. Participation from civil society should be included in preparing the national budget to ensure transparency and responsiveness of the same. "Only a president truly aware of the under-investment in the health and education sectors, the abject funding deficiency, will give the necessary push to ensure that the primordial concerns of the country in its pursuit of gainful and pro-poor development are given primacy," she said.

Senator Legarda was keynote speaker at the 11th National Institutes of Health Anniversary and 7th University Science and Technology Week with a theme Health Research Towards Reducing the burden of Diseases Related to Poverty at the University of the Philippines in Manila.

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