Abad also told reporters here that a re-enacted budget is farfetched.

Abad, who came here to address a government accountants’ meeting at Camp John Hay, said the expeditious passage of the 2011 budget at the House of Representatives meant it will be passed in the Senate before the year ends.

Claiming the Department of Budget and Management is well within schedule of the annual budget deliberations, Abad said they implemented a zero-based approach that reviews all items and checks their relevance in the P1.645- trillion national budget instead of the usual incremental approach which is prone to excesses and unnecessary spending.

He said that around 35 percent of the national budget went to social services, followed by infrastructure to meet Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets for 2015, including the government’s controversial P21-billion conditional cash transfer (CCT) program.

He added that the budget is still topped by that of the Department of Education, which has the largest chunk at P207.3 billion, higher by P32 billion this year, followed by the Department of Public Works and Highways and the Department of National Defense who are allocated P110.6 billion and P104.7 billion, respectively.

The Department of the Interior and Local Government was given P88.2 billion; Agriculture, P37.7 billion; Social Welfare and Development, P34.3 billion; Health, P33.3 billion; Transportation and Communications, P32.3 billion; Agrarian Reform, P16.7 billion; and Justice, P14.3 billion.

‘Investment on the poor’

Abad added that the budget is heavily skewed toward poor provinces with focus on building more rural health units, immunization for children and health insurance coverage, all of which will help the country achieve MDG targets.

Government is tracking a bigger tourism market through financing efficient tourism infrastructure by doubling the country’s three million a year target. “We really have to catch up with the rest of the ASEAN countries,” Abad said.

Public-private partnerships will be focused in Metro Manila with over P200-billion worth of projects, the DBM official also said.

Apprehensions regarding the conditional cash transfer program, Abad said, will be explained by the convergence of not only the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program but also of the Kalahi-Cidss and Sea-K program, which helps poor communities through foreign grants and livelihood opportunities.

The controversy of the CCT is in the implementation which, Abad said, calls for vigilance on the part of local government units and civil society in order to be successful.

To check apprehensions, safeguard mechanisms were placed in the program, such as the reallocation of the P21-billion CCT fund to education, public health and livelihood once the Department of Social Welfare and Development fails to allocate these funds by the third quarter of 2011.

Thus, the infusion of more into social services will help them hit their targets as the country currently lags behind the MDG.

All these infusions into social services are also an investment on the part of government, which hopes to cut poverty incidence by 2015.

Artemio Dumlao, Philippine Star