PSC urges NSAs to justify budgets

MANILA, Philippines –  The 26th Southeast Asian Games in Indonesia in November will give all national sports associations (NSAs) the chance to justify their budgets from the Philippine Sports Commission.

“Let’s say you were only given P5 million this year and you deliver, your budget will increase or may be doubled next year,” said PSC chairman Richie Garcia during a media briefing yesterday.

The same goes for NSAs with huge budgets for 2011. If they fail to deliver internationally, starting off with the coming SEA Games, they may face a slash in their budget for next year.

“It’s a chance to justify your budgets,” was Garcia’s message to the 53 NSAs that will receive a total of P400 million from the government sports agency this year.

Shooting, taekwondo and wushu topped the list with budgets of P15 million each, followed by athletics and boxing with P14.5 million, and fencing and gymnastics with P10 million each.

Swimming will get P12 million although the aquatics association will get another P5.3 million for diving, P2.4 million for fin swimming, P2.4 million for synchronized swimming, P6.9 million for water polo and another P600,000 for open water swimming.

So far, only 38 of the 53 have their budgets approved by the PSC, equivalent to a total of P275 million. Ten more NSAs are lobbying for a combined budget of P100 million.

A couple of NSAs locked up in leadership disputes have their budgets on hold, like karatedo and cycling.

The Philippines will vie for 375 out of the 467 gold medals to be disputed in the coming SEA Games.

“We have a budget of P400 million for all the NSAs this year, and if you look at it, it’s almost a million pesos for every gold medal we will compete for in the SEA Games,” added Garcia.

The PSC chief explained that the budgets for each NSA were approved after a series of meetings with their representatives.

“This is not an overnight thing, not a one-sided deal and not dictatorial. It was a good, honest to goodness budget deliberation between the PSC and the NSAs,” he added.

The budgets for each NSA included those for international and local events, training expenses, equipment, basic allowances of athletes and salaries of coaches, meal allowances and venue fees.

“If you noticed, the total budget for allowances (P53.8 million) is almost the same as the total budget for meal allowances (P52.9 million). It’s because we are really focusing on the athletes’ nutrition,” said PSC commissioner Jolly Gomez.