EDITORS DESK

Every government agency has to jostle for an annual  budgetary allocation from the Department of Budget and Management (DBM).

Top officials have to defend their proposed budget before the Lower House and the Senate and face off questions from legislators, who are suspicious as to where the agency is going to spend the money or just out there, grandstanding. 

Thus, during budget defense, agency officials are careful not to antagonize the honorables. One special case is of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). 

The DTI is a government line agency with an overarching mandate that cuts across all sectors. DTI is an important component in almost all of government efforts. In fact, reporters covering the DTI is a strike-around journalist because the agency has a say or representation in all sectors, whether private or public. 

DTI wears many hats. It is mandated to protect consumers, develop businesses and industries, promote exports, generate investments, and create jobs. Everything that affects consumers and business falls under DTI.

When it comes to consumers, it is answerable to the entire Philippine population. It has to ensure that goods and services sold or produced in the country or imported meet the standards and observe fair trade practices. 

While protecting consumers, it also balances the interest of business, which answers another mandate of job creation. 

It must ensure there is enough room for businesses to grow and earn. Ensuring a balanced policy would encourage entrepreneurship and more employment opportunities.

I believe that developing and promoting entrepreneurship should be made a more impactful DTI mandate if we should address poverty in the country. 
There has been no let up in the DTI and its attached agencies to develop and nurture micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) through trainings, fairs, digital advocacies, among others.   

DTI provides shared service facilities to help entrepreneurs improve their production. It facilitates in opening market access especially to startups. 
Through its attached SB Corp., the DTI lends capital to MSMEs at very low interest rate.

The DTI secretary is the chairman of the EODB ART Advisory Council and works to eliminate bureaucratic red tape to further ease of doing business in the country.

DTI is the first stop for foreign investors with the Board of Investments (BOI) directly under its wing.

Given this mandate, the agency is expected to conduct investment roadshows overseas to drum up investor interest in the Philippines. It implements several industry development roadmaps.

But the DTI has one of the lowest budgets among the government’s line agencies. Its ₱7.9 billion budget for 2024 is ₱13.1 billion lower than the department's original budget proposal of ₱21 billion.

After listening to the agency’s overwhelming responsibilities and how they carried out their mandate despite a meager budget, legislators have come to realize that DTI is one agency with a well-spent budget.

I listened to last year’s defense of the DTI budget and legislators were also all praises for the agency.

At the recent congressional hearing for its 2024 budget,  the House Committee on Appropriations rallied behind DTI and called for the augmentation the agency’s budget.

Committee Chairman Ako Bicol Party-list Rep. Zaldy Co said that if the government is really serious in generating more investments and creating better-paying jobs for Filipinos, “Congress must ensure that DTI and its attached agencies have the resources to its do work properly.”

Co called for an increase of the DTI's ₱7.9-billion proposed budget to support its programs and projects, especially for MSMEs, and ensure consumer protection.

"We also have to spend more to develop the products we export as well as train Filipinos to be entrepreneurs; to be job creators, not seekers," Co said in a statement.

During the budget hearing, DTI Secretary Alfredo E. Pascual lamented the DBM decision to set the agency’s expenditure program next year to ₱7.91 billion, an increase from the spending plan this year but a mere third of the DTI’s original budget proposal of ₱21.03 billion for 2024. 

The DBM cut the Office of the Secretary’s budget to ₱5.32 billion from the proposed ₱12.61 billion while the allocation for the BOI was sharply reduced to ₱659 million, roughly a  third of its proposed ₱1.85 billion. 

₱659 million may sound huge, but if you really want to mount a big campaign to make investments happen here, that amount is a pittance. We can do a comparison with other ASEAN neighbors, certainly we would be a bottom-dweller.

Pascual said programs designed by DTI to better prepare the economy for newer technologies like artificial intelligence were also left unfunded in the 2024 National Expenditures Program. 

Many lawmakers shared Co’s sentiment and pledged support to find ways to supplement, if not increase, DTI's budget.

Pascual expressed appreciation to the legislators for defending his agency’s budget proposal.

(Bernie Cahiles-Magkilat is the Business Editor of Manila Bulletin)