Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Secretary Amenah Pangandaman assured that the national government has enough revenues to shoulder the additional budget to be given to local government units (LGUs) for the implementation of the Supreme Court's Mandanas ruling.

During a Palace briefing, the budget chief expressed confidence that the fiscal situation of the national government won’t get impacted by slashing P185 billion from its budget to be given to LGUs.

“As of now naman, wala naman. The DOF (Department of Finance) has been incurring a lot of revenues right now. Hindi naman po maaapektuhan (As of now naman, there’s none. The DOF has been incurring a lot of revenues right now. It won’t get affected),” she said.

Pangandaman explained that under the ruling, which aims to provide a bigger share of the Philippines’ annual revenues to LGUs, the national government will give an additional P185 billion to local governments.

This computation is based on the determination made in 2022 on the “result of all taxes and determination of just share of LGUs with total NTA (net tangible assets) shares amounting to P959.04 billion.”

The Mandanas ruling was approved after the Supreme Court, in 2019, ruled that the computation of total internal revenue allotments (IRA) should include collections from local Customs offices and other tax-collecting agencies.

The Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) aims for the full devolution of LGUs by 2024.

However, Pangandaman admitted that not all LGUs are prepared to implement programs on their own after they received expanded fiscal power due to the Mandanas ruling.

Since LGUs have different capacities, the budget secretary explained that some cities are more “advanced and developed” and have more funding to hire additional manpower to implement projects.

“There are LGUs po that we know are really lagging po. Hindi nila kayang i-implement ang mga projects kasi kulang ang kanilang technical experties and capacity to implement those projects (There are LGUs po that we know are really lagging. They cannot implement the projects because they lack technical experties and capacity to implement those projects),” she explained.

She cited as an example how LGUs are tasked under the Local Government Code to manage the national irrigation system, but most LGUs can only implement a small water impounding system.

“So, may mga ganun po, may mga proyektong sobrang laki at saka kailangan ng technical capacity and expertise po ng mga tao sa LGUs to prepare and plan properly and efficiently ang mga projects (So, there are things like that, there are projects that are too big and would really need technical capacity and expertise of the people in the LGUs to prepare and plan properly and efficiently the projects),” Pangandaman said.