Abad defends proposal to increase president’s salary

MANILA, Philippines - Budget Secretary Florencio Abad defended yesterday the proposal to increase the salary of the president and other government executives.

Abad said Rep. Carlos Zarate of party-list group Bayan Muna apparently missed the point of the proposed salary adjustments in the government.

Earlier, Zarate slammed the proposal to increase the monthly pay of the president by more than threefold while state workers would get a smaller adjustment.

“The proposal has four objectives: raise government pay to be competitive with markets in a bid to attract and retain talent; temper the cost of these increases while maximizing the benefits to employees; provide higher take-home pay, and strengthen the link between compensation and performance,” Abad said.

He said the government pay is currently 45 percent below market rates on a weighted average, with the lowest salary grade at around 126 percent of the market and the highest grade at just 23 percent.

Abad said the salary adjustment aims to bring government pay, at the very least, to around 70 percent of the market.

“The proposed increases, comprising of basic pay, bonuses and performance-based adjustments, will mostly go to employees falling within salary grades 1 to 24. Less than 10 percent will go to government executives, or those with salary grades ranging from 29 to 33,” he said.