Senator Panfilo Lacson surmised that the delay in the Department of Public Works and Highways' (DPWH) submission of its proposed 2021 budget might have been due to some "haggling" between lawmakers and the agency.
"My inside info, my source from DBM (Department of Budget and Management) told us that ang reason for the hasty submission of erroneous appropriations for the 2021 NEP (National Expenditure Program), kasi late nag-submit ang DPWH (because the DPWH was late in its submission)," Lacson said in an interview with ABS-CBN News Channel on Friday.
"For what reason I don’t know. We can only suspect that there was a lot of haggling that went on between DPWH and some legislators," he said.
"That’s what we were told," he responded when asked again about his statement.
Lacson said that while there was no way of validating this information, he said there should be no reason that the DPWH would be delayed in its submission especially that the government's "Reset, Rebound and Recover" goal for next year was anchored on its "Build, Build, Build" infrastructure program, as maintained by economic managers.
The senator earlier flagged at least P469-billion worth of items in the DPWH budget that were either "re-appropriations" or lump sum allocations, which he said would be unconstitutional if approved by Congress.
While Malacañang maintained that there were no unconstitutional items in the proposed 2021 budget, DBM Secretary Wendel Avisado already committed to submit an errata to correct and specify the items in the DPWH budget.
"'Yon po 'yong errata na gagawin namin para hindi po re-appropriation ang labas, which is, I agree, na hindi naman po pupwede 'yon (That would be the errata that we would come up with so they will not appear as re-appropriations, which, I agree, could not be done)," Avisado told senators during the Senate finance committee's hearing on Thursday.
Lacson said that should the DPWH fail in justifying the P469 billion, "at least a portion of that amount should be realigned or reassigned to other agencies that would need more appropriations."