A June 26, 2011 press release by the Department of Budget and Management
“Hello?” was all Budget Secretary Florencio B. Abad could say to the claim of the previous administration that it turned-over a stable economy to the Aquino administration.
“It is amusing at the same time galling for Congresswoman Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to lecture President Noynoy Aquino about building on the gains of her government. The first question that comes to mind is what gains? The people’s gains, or her gains?” he said.
“Prudent expenditure took a back seat to political survival and political patronage during the previous administration,” he said.
In the case of the National Food Authority (NFA), he said that its obligations were just around P18 billion in 2001. But when Arroyo left government, NFA’s outstanding loans had skyrocketed to a staggering P176.8 billion. “P123 billion of that was incurred in just two and a half years, from 2008 to 2010. In those years, we overbought way beyond what we needed and at prices way above world prices,” Abad said.
He said that with reforms now being introduced in the NFA, the Aquino Administration has stopped the hemorrhage, a food staples self-sufficiency program is in place, bumper rice harvest was recorded in the first quarter of 2011 and rice imports were cut substantially to 860,000 metric tons, 200,000 metric tons of which are buffer stock.
“The previous administration left us with our largest projected fiscal deficit to date of P325-billion or 3.9 percent of gross domestic product. Is she saying that is sustainable?” he said.
He recalled that when President Aquino took over in July last year, more than 60 percent of the P1.541-trillion national budget of 2010 had already been disbursed the Arroyo administration; leaving it with a mere 40 percent to survive its first semester in office.
And as if the fiscal condition was not in dire straits, he said the Arroyo administration even authorized the obligation of P16.5 billion of P67.98 billion in Congressional insertions. These Congressional were earlier subject by the Arroyo administration to a conditional veto, subject to new revenues being raised, which never materialized. “In other words, the previous administration violated its own veto message,” he said.
He also said that the Calamity Fund in 2010 also had to be replenished because the Arroyo administration used up more than 70 percent of the P2-billion fund in the first half, “even before the typhoon season commenced.” Worse, P105 million of the funds went to the former President’s district, while other more heavily affected provinces got measly support.
“With prudent spending the Aquino administration reduced the deficit to 3.5 percent of GDP at the end of 2010, even registering surpluses in August and November, while able to adequately provide for basic services like increasing the conditional cash transfer beneficiaries to a million and augmenting the calamity fund by P1.75 billion,” he said.
“Nobody home? Of course! We’ve left the old neighbourhood. We live in a new neighbourhood now—where decency, transparency and accountability reign,” Abad said.
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