P400M not enough to fund NSA programs

MANILA, Philippines –  The P400 million which the Philippine Sports Commission plans to spend for the plans and programs of the different national sports associations (NSAs) this year certainly won’t do.

Chairman Richie Garcia yesterday said that as of last week, the requests for funding from at least 38 NSAs have already reached P480 million.

There are 39 NSAs classified as regular members of the Philippine Olympic Committee and a dozen more associate members, and under Republic Act 6847, the PSC has to fund them all.

“We have allocated P400 million for all of them this year. But as of the last count, after 38 NSAs submitted their budget proposals, we have reached P480 million,” said the PSC chairman.

For a change, the PSC and the POC asked all NSAs to come up with their respective budget proposals for the entire year, those to be spent in training, equipment and international exposures.

But since the early requests have overshot the entire allocation, and with more than a dozen more NSAs preparing theirs, Garcia said he will have to ask the NSAs to make the adjustments.

“The P400 million will not be evenly divided among the NSAs because we have what we call the priority sports, like boxing or those that deliver the medals for the country,” said Garcia.

“This cannot be. We only have P400 million for them this year,” he added.

Garcia said he and Philippine Olympic Committee president Jose Cojuangco will meet all the NSAs on Tuesday at the Manila Yacht Club so they could discuss the situation.

“Because anything more than P400 million we cannot give,” said Garcia, explaining that there’s the SEA Games coming up in December, and a lot of qualifying tournaments for the 2012 London Olympics.

“We now have the Youth Olympic Games, the Beach Games, the Indoor Games and even the Asian Winter Games. The number of competitions have grown, but not our budget,” he added.

Garcia said this is the main reason the PSC is batting for its five percent share from the monthly gross income of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor).

At 2.5 percent, the PSC gets close to P40 million a month from Pagcor. This represents the National Sports Development Fund (NSDF) which is used to fund all the NSAs.

And with additional contributions from other government agencies like the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office and Philippine Racing Commission, the PSC gets around P700 million a year.

“If Pagcor can give us what we’re asking we can generate another P600 million and that will mean P1.3 billion for us to implement an honest to goodness program for all the NSAs,” said Garcia.

The PSC stands to receive only P168 million from the General Appropriations Act for 2011.

The PSC, under then chairman Harry Angping, proposed a budget of P740 million for 2011, but the Department of Budget endorsed only P168 million, or less than 20 percent of it, to Congress.

“To be fair with the DBM, the P168 million it proposed for next year is a draft of our budget of P224 million for this year (2010). All the government departments and agencies are facing budget cuts for next year,” said Garcia.

The money from the GAA is supposed to be spent on grassroots development, infrastructure, including maintenance and repair of sports facilities, and the salaries of the PSC officials and employees.