Roxas: Local infra projects will be priority

CEBU, Philippines - The national government has assured officials of local government units that infrastructure projects in the local level like provincial and farm-to-market roads will be a priority within the term of President Benigno Aquino III.

In an a dialogue last Thursday between mayors and LGU officials in Cebu, Department of Budget and Management and Department of Interior and Local Government Secretaries, Butch Abad and Mar Roxas, respectively, addressed various concerns including the allocation for LGU projects.

“There is a lot of money that will fund infrastructure in the local level,” said Roxas, adding that with the increase of the Internal Revenue Allotment due to the booming economy that reportedly rose three years ago during the start of Aquino’s term, more allocation would go to local projects since it is also the LGUs which pushed the economy up by 15 percent.

“As President Noy always says, kayo ang gumawa nito,” Roxas said, disclosing that the IRA is included in the P2.6- trillion budget for 2015, which will subsequently increase in the following years.

DBM Secretary Abad said that when the administration of Aquino started, the budget for infrastructure, excluding those under Public Private Partnership agreements, was at P165 billion.

“Next year, it would be P562 billion and before our term ends, it’s going to be P800 billion,” said Abad, adding “the good thing is, before the term ends, we would have finished rehabilitation and paving all our national roads and bridges which means there will be an opportunity to look at arterial and provincial, farm to market roads, as well as access for tourism roads.”

With this, Abad suggested to the LGU officials to begin developing their network plans so that the national government would know the particular projects Cebu towns and cities would need as far as arterial, provincials and farm to market and tourism roads are concerned.

Meanwhile, Tuburan Mayor Democrito Diamante asked the national agency secretaries if it is possible that funds for projects under the Grassroots Participatory Budgeting process (GPB) would be downloaded directly to the LGUs.

Diamante said that for education related projects for example, the town has a budget of P7 million but then the Department of Education does not know where the budget is from and where it would be spent.

He added that for DOH too, the town should have P3 million but they are given medicines instead which he said are already expired or some are not the ones the town needs.

According to the National Budget Memorandum 121 on March 18, 2014, the GPB, formerly called Bottom-up Budgeting, “is an approach to preparing the budget propo-sal of agencies, taking into consideration the development needs of cities/municipalities as identified in their respective local poverty reduction action plans that shall be formulated with strong participation of basic sector organizations and other civil society organizations.”

Roxas said he will look into the concern and will discuss it during the next GPB meeting.  — AJ de la Torre-Orong/NSA (FREEMAN)