Senator wants standby fund removed

A SENATOR on Thursday said that he is pushing for the removal of unprogrammed appropriations in next year’s budget over corruption risks.

“I would remove the unprogrammed appropriations, in the next budget I will talk to the chairman about this,” Senator Erwin T. Tulfo, vice-chair of the Senate Finance panel, said in a news briefing in mixed Filipino and English.

Mr. Tulfo added that unprogrammed funding is no longer needed in the national budget as it has been a source of misuse.

“People don’t like it right? Because that’s where they found (abuse) in unprogrammed funding,” he said.

Critics have been calling out unprogrammed appropriations as another form of discretionary funding prone to abuse by lawmakers and officials, after reports found that anomalous and ghost infrastructure projects were funded through unprogrammed appropriations.

“Why will you have unprogrammed appropriations projects? When you don’t even have money. Why will you spend so much when your income is so little? Bad economics.”

Unprogrammed appropriations are standby funds for pre-planned government projects or emergency contingencies, it totals P150.9 billion under this year’s national spending plan following the P92.5-billion veto by the President. — Adrian H. Halili