Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon on Thursday, Sept. 9 said he is disappointed that the proposed P5.024-trillion national budget for 2022 remains detached from reality and shows the Duterte government’s skewed priorities during this time of a COVID-19 pandemic.

Drilon made his position known at the continuation of the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) hearing on the 2022 national budget of the Senate Finance Committee chaired by Sen. Sonny Angara.

“For the past 23 years that I have been analyzing the budget, the 2022 budget is the most detached from reality and has the most skewed priorities,” Drilon told state economic managers.

The minority leader said he doesn’t buy the National Economic and Development Authority’s (NEDA) projection that the Philippines can recover to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2022.

“I couldn’t help but ask, where is the optimism coming from? Almost two years after the pandemic and not much has changed – in terms of strategy and more importantly in terms of budget priorities,” Drilon lamented.

“Nag-mutate na ang virus. Ang style ng gobyerno sana mag-mutate na din (The virus has mutated. I hope the government’s style will also mutate),” he pointed out.

Until now, Drilon said the government has been remiss in utilizing public funds already allocated by Congress for COVID-19 response, particularly to address the pandemic’s impact on the education and health sectors and basic social services.

“Our good Secretary of Finance (Carlos Dominguez) said that ‘fiscal discipline will save us.’ I agree, but discipline must not only pertain to how the cash is sourced. Discipline should also be seen in how the money is spent,” the veteran lawmaker pointed out.

“There is fiscal discipline when agencies do not spend what was appropriated? Yesterday the DBM admitted that the government’s obligation rate is only 75 percent, of which, only 30% is being disbursed. To put it simply, for every P1,000 that Congress allocated, only P750 is obligated and out of which, only P250 is spent,” he calculated.

“May pangangailangan, may pondong nakalaan, pero hindi ginastos ang pera. (There’s a need, there are funds allocated, but the money is not spent). Is that fiscal discipline?” he asked.

For one, Drilon said the government could have done more for the education sector, especially since most students from public schools have not seen a teacher even virtually in almost two years.

He was also expecting the government to provide more funds for the social amelioration program or “ayuda,” but the budget for Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program barely increased. The government also did not bother to fund health care workers’ Special Risk Allowances (SRA).

Instead, the Duterte government chooses to pour more money for intelligence and confidential funds and insisted on increasing the funds for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and against the backdrop of a growing budget deficit and national debt.

“Is it fiscal discipline when we have so many lump-sum appropriations in the budget? Is it fiscal discipline when you start creating new agencies against the backdrop of a growing budget deficit and national debt? Is it fiscal discipline when you have P28-Billion for the NTF-ELCAC but zero for the health workers?” he lamented.

“NTF-ELCAC is part of the programmed appropriation. Why is this a budget priority for the next fiscal year? Are we saying that insurgency has become a bigger, more dangerous threat than COVID-19 and its fast-mutating variant? Are we saying that the NTF-ELCAC is more needed than our education sector?” Drilon stressed.