BEYOND BUDGET
Assalamu alaikum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh.
I am thrilled to share that yesterday, Sept. 17, 2024, the Public Financial Management (PFM) Committee, composed of the Department of Budget and Management, Department of Finance, Commission on Audit, and the Bureau of Treasury, along with its resource institutions and in the presence of colleagues in the government, development partners, and key stakeholders, endorsed to President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. (PBBM) the Philippine PFM Reforms Roadmap 2024-2028.
The Roadmap lays down the government’s PFM reform strategy, weaving together a coherent set of PFM initiatives over the medium term that will reverberate throughout the bureaucracy to ensure cohesive and effective collaboration. As PBBM highlighted in his message during the ceremony, “With this roadmap, we give a clear mandate of ensuring that the money given to us by the people serves a purpose that truly matters, that will make a difference. It is about swift, efficient disaster relief and response actions, so that no communities [are] left behind when disaster strikes. It is about public healthcare access, ensuring that medical costs do not become yet another burden for our citizens. It is about expanding social services, creating not just a safety net, but opportunities for every Filipino to succeed, no matter what their circumstances may be.”
With the theme, “Propelling Transformation, Achieving Prosperity,” the Roadmap captures the government’s commitment to drive transformation in delivering government programs and services through enhanced PFM policies and an operating framework, as PBBM directed through Executive Order No. 29,s. 2023, to digitalize and reengineer the country’s PFM processes.
I am positive that a strong PFM system, as a backbone for government operations, will raise the bar for efficiency, transparency, and accountability — sustaining the economy’s high-growth trajectory to ultimately achieve prosperity. I am certain it will contribute to the achievement of the people’s aspirations in “AmBisyon Natin 2040” of a “matatag, maginhawa at panatag na buhay,” as further enunciated in the Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028, the Medium-Term Fiscal Framework, and the President’s 8-Point Socioeconomic Agenda.
The Roadmap is a product of extensive planning workshops, where the committee, in consultation with key stakeholders, reviewed PFM reforms developed over the past years, identified gaps, potential challenges, and key learnings. Hence, it holistically addresses key challenges in the current environment and strategically maps out key interventions across priority focus areas. It also highlights the role of local government units (LGUs) in PFM.
Specifically, the Roadmap places our PFM on a sustainable path through transformational outcomes across 11 strategic focus areas categorized as either core or enabler.
The following are the six core strategic focus areas: (1) Planning and budgeting linkage aligns national and regional development priorities to drive equitable economic growth and development across the nation; (2) Cash management improves compliance, efficiency, and accuracy of cashflow programming and its alignment with cash releases; (3) Public asset management boosts completeness and accuracy of data on public assets, contributing to effective asset management planning and maintenance; (4) Accounting and auditing strengthens internal controls for public expenditure and revenue accounting, and enhances compliance with financial accounting manual and guidelines; (5) Capacity development enhances coverage of capacity-building programs for PFM workforce; and (6) Digital PFM leverages technology for efficiency, transparency, accuracy, and timeliness of budget and financial accountability reports to ensure efficient management of revenues and expenditure.
Meanwhile, the five enablers include: (1) PFM Policy and Legal Framework to establish comprehensive and harmonized policies and legislative framework for PFM; (2) Public procurement to enhance transparency and efficiency in public procurement processes; (3) Disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM) to improve efficiency in releasing, monitoring, and reporting of DRRM Funds; (4) PFM for LGUs to enhance and sustain institutional arrangements for PFM in LGUs; and (5) Monitoring and evaluation for public expenditure to improve oversight for public expenditures, contributing to the realization of intended outcomes and benefits.
Indeed, the PFM Reforms Roadmap 2024-2028 is more than just a blueprint; it is a promise to the Filipino people we have sworn to serve to enhance our systems and processes, thereby ensuring that public finances are managed with integrity, as directed by the President in his SONA for “all agencies to ensure that every centavo allocated will be judiciously spent for our urgent priorities and socially impactful programs.”
Thus, I thank our President for providing the impetus and fully supporting this initiative. My sincere gratitude and appreciation, as well, to the PFM Committee members and its secretariat, resource institutions, our colleagues in the national and local government, and our development partners, especially the Asian Development Bank, who toiled to ensure that we have a Roadmap that reflects the government’s commitment for a modernized and harmonized PFM system. Congratulations on a job well done!
Beyond budget, as we embark on this transformative journey, I am filled with a profound sense of optimism and determination. The PFM Reforms Roadmap 2024-2028 articulates the strategies to make our vision of a digitalized and effective PFM system a reality — so that we can deliver a sound, systematic, transparent, and accountable form of governance. With this Roadmap and a whole-of-nation approach, I am confident that our aspirations for a prosperous, equitable, and future-proof Bagong Pilipinas are within reach. Let us, therefore, work together to implement this and other game-changing reforms to achieve our Agenda for Prosperity.
(Amenah F. Pangandaman is the Secretary of the Department of Budget and Management.)