President Aquino's 2011 Budget Message

COA Reports, Civil Society and NGOs inputs are given greater weight by the Aquino administration in determining the zero-based budget budgetary process

Message

of

His Excellency BENIGNO S. AQUINO III

President of the Philippines

to

The Fifteenth Congress of the Philippines

on

The Budget for 2011

[August 24, 2010]

Ladies and Gentlemen of the 15th Congress of the Philippines:

Through the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, I have the honor to submit for your consideration the proposed budget for 2011.

This is the first financial blueprint of my Administration. It has been formulated to turn our vision for social reform into a tangible reality for our fellow citizens.

The Filipino people have placed on our shoulders the responsibility to make their government more responsive to their needs, to reduce poverty and eliminate waste. With the help of Congress, we can harness the restored confidence in our country as a result of this year’s national elections. We have a new mandate from our people. It is now incumbent on all of us to live up to that mandate.

When I accepted our people’s call for me to run for office, I pointed out that the presidency is about the efficient allocation of resources. The call of our times is for reform: to make this possible, we are submitting a budget and corresponding resources to the programs and policies that make real the changes we need to revitalize our economy, while leaving no sector behind.

A CALL FOR GENUINE CHANGE

The P1.645 trillion National Budget we are proposing for Fiscal Year 2011 will be our vehicle to pursue these necessary changes.

Despite the meager increase of 6.8 percent from this year’s appropriations, the proposed budget will nevertheless bring forth vital outcomes that will make a difference in the lives of our fellow Filipinos.

The 2011 National Budget focuses funds where they are most needed and where these will yield the most benefits. We have redesigned the budget to ensure that every centavo will be put to good use. We are seeking new appropriations of P1.0 trillion, inclusive of P66.9 billion of unprogrammed Appropriations.

At the opening of the present session, I said in my State of the Nation Address that the budget will accurately identify problems and will give attention to the right solutions.

We reviewed the crucial programs and projects of major departments aided by the results of empirical studies, observations from the field, and reports from the Commission on Audit (COA).

We arrived at priorities, with the concurrence of my Cabinet, to address critical gaps in social services for the poorest segments of our population.

We made some bold decisions to correct glaring inefficiencies, terminated programs that no longer delivered their intended outcomes, and reduced funding for programs that require redesign.

We fleshed out the use of lump sum funds for greater transparency, and buckled down to working on implementing necessary reforms.

All of this was done to uplift the lives of our countrymen who are in the direst need of government’s compassion and support – the poor, the disadvantaged, the marginalized.

(To read the rest of President Aquino's 2011 Budget message, please click on this link:  http://diliman-diary-sidebars.blogspot.com/2010/08/president-aquinos-2011-budget-message.html).