President Aquino to submit increased budget for SUCs to Congress tomorrow

President Benigno S. Aquino III said today in his annual State of the Nation Address (SONA) that he would be submitting to Congress tomorrow the annual budget for the national government which also includes a 43.61% increase for State Universities and Colleges (SUCs).

He said that the he is proposing to Congress to approve SUCs a 43.61 percent increase in the budgets of SUCs for 2013. He said that as a reminder though, that everything was in accordance with a plan: There are corresponding conditions to this budget increase.

He said that the SUC Reform Roadmap of CHED, which has been deliberated and agreed upon, must be enacted to ensure that the students sponsored by the state are of top caliber. "Expect that if you work to get high marks in this assignment, we will be striving just as hard to address the rest of your needs," he said.

Here is the full text of President Aquino's 3rd SONA (2012) in Filipino and English.

Other reforms are expected to be operational and fiscal in nature. For example, the Diliman Diary has been following the progress of the University of the Philippines System in realigning the operations of University-affiliated foundations with Commission on Audit requests for more access to its financial and other data. CHED working with COA and the Department of Management will be working even more closely with U.P. and other SUCs in the future to ensure that these reforms are implemented to the greatest extent possible.

P2.006-T PROPOSAL SUBMITTED TO CONGRESS ON TUESDAY


President Bis set to submit the Budget of Expenditures and Sources of Financing (BESF) for fiscal year 2013 to Congress on Tuesday, 24 July 2012: a day after his third State of the Nation Address (SONA) today.

Budget and Management Secretary Florencio B. Abad, who will be delivering the expenditure plan to Congress on behalf of the President, said that this P2.006-trillion proposed National Budget deepens the Aquino Administration’s commitment to its Social Contract with the Filipino People.

“This proposed Empowerment Budget prioritizes funding for programs and projects that have impact in unshackling the poor from poverty and in reducing poverty incidence to 16.6 percent by 2016. President Aquino has directed us to take bold steps in closing key social service delivery gaps—in classrooms, teachers, health insurance subsidies, rural health facilities, etc.—by 2013,” he said.

“He also instructed us to build on our economic achievements so far, such as the 6.4-percent gross domestic product growth in the first quarter of 2012, by investing in the foundations of rapid, inclusive and sustained growth. With this, we are funding the attainment of rice self-sufficiency by next year; the pavement of all national roads by 2014 and all secondary roads by 2016, the arrival of 5.53 million tourists by next year and 10 million by 2016, among others,” he said.

Abad pointed out that the combined budgetary allocations of the Social Services and Economic Services sector of P1.210 trillion for 2013—60.3 percent of the P2.006-trillion Budget—supports the achievement of the aforementioned targets (Annex A).

The proposed 2013 National Budget consists of P1.251 trillion in Programmed New Appropriations for national government operations, programs and projects; and P755.2 billion in Automatic Appropriations for debt servicing, local government allocations and others (Annex B).

Legislative action and approval will be sought for Programmed New Appropriations as well as for P177.5 billion in Unprogrammed Appropriations, or standby spending authority which the national government may only be utilized when its revenues exceed targets.

The Budget Chief also said that the Proposed Budget for 2013 is the earliest to be submitted to Congress in the last twelve years (Annex C). He said that by submitting the BESF right after the SONA, the Administration is showing its commitment to ensure the early enactment of the Budget.

“Last year, the Administration and Congress worked together to ensure that the 2012 Budget becomes law by 15 December 2011: the earliest Budget enactment since the restoration of our democracy. We look forward to repeating that historical feat,” Abad said.

In the last twelve years, the Proposed Budget for 2001 was submitted on 24 June 2000, as early as the 2013 proposal’s submission, but it was not enacted. Before the Aquino administration, the last Budget to be enacted on time was the 1999 Budget, signed into law on 30 December 1998.

Directory of the 15th Congress: Dear Readers please help us update this!

Editor's note: With the looming budget cut of the University of the Philippines System and other State Universities and Colleges, we are encouraging all of our readers to write all the Senators and Congressmen they know to restore U.P.'s and other SUCs budgets to their optimal levels. We have posted the directory of the Senate here. Unfortunately, in the case of the 15th Congress, there is not a lot of transparency, and we have only managed to piece together a partial list of Congressmen from primary, secondary and tertiary sources, because the House of Representatives secretariat itself has thrown a massive cordon sanitaire between the representatives and the people they represent by making their contact details (by email in particular) unavailable to members of the public.

Troubled with the thought of such a lack of transparency, we went to sleep over the problem and we woke up this morning with the bright idea of asking our readers to help us in this massive quest!

We would like to ask our readers to help us out in producing this definitive guide which is of great use to individuals, NGOs, people's organizations, foundations, etcetera to email their congressmen and women about SUCs budget cuts, the RH bill and other pressing matters.

The Diliman Diary has posted a Google link, which allows readers to edit the information by posting the names and contact details of the congessmen and women they know. If you have any contacts please go to the link and you will be able to edit the information. This is an incredibly precious resource for members of the public, so please help us out with this. You won't regret it!

Here is the link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmwZxG_XzknNdFpJU2pmQ0llZ1RTTk4xZFB0U25WZ2c&hl=en_US

Announcement: Office of the U.P. Student Regent: Dec 7 March to Philcoa to protest SUCs 2011 budget cuts to Congressional committee

Office of the Student Regent, University of the Philippines 

ALERT! UP students, especially those from UP Diliman: Today, Dec 7 at 10am, the Congress shall convene Bi-cameral Conference to approve the 2011 national budget at Philippine Coconut Authority Building (PHILCOA) near DAR. Calling on all students to join the march to Philcoa to further our call for greater state subsidy for UP and SUCs! No to SUC budget cuts!

Bayan Muna files its first measure in the 15th Congress: a stronger Freedom of Information bill

Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Teddy A. Casiño today lined up with employees of various congressmen at the House of Representatives to himself re-file a stronger Freedom of Information (FOI) bill.

The key features of House Bill 133 – An Act to Ensure Public Access to Official Records, Documents and Any Other Information of Public Concern – includes absolute and mandatory access to matters of official information, public concern and public interest in specified cases and the refinement of the concept and operation of covered information in whatever form or nature, whether written, oral or visual, among others.

"As far as Congress is concerned, this, not the wang-wang or counter-flow issue, is the first acid test of the Aquino government's commitment to good governance," Casiño said.

In the explanatory note of HB 133, authors Casiño and fellow Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares said that “transparency and accountability is founded on the people's right to information. By guaranteeing and laying down the procedures for the exercise of that right, this bill aims to ensure transparency and accountability in government and, ultimately, good and clean governance.”

"If the Aquino administration is serious in its platform of good governance, it should exert extra effort to have this bill passed. Considering that a similar proposal was already approved by the previous House, it would not be unreasonable to expect this to be approved within two to three months," Casiño said.

“Our FOI bill, is among the proposed measures that we will work hard to pass into law in the 15th Congress. We believe that this is a stronger bill compared to the measures in the previous Congress as we have, among others, strengthened the provisions on mandatory compliance (Section 5), provided a specific declassification of information clause (section 5k) and shortened the period for government agencies to disclose information requested (Section 9),” Casiño added.

Section 5. k) states that “All classified information contained in all government agency records that (1) are more than 25 years old, and (2) have been determined to have historical value shall be automatically declassified whether or not the records have been reviewed. Subsequently, all classified information in such records shall be automatically declassified no longer than 25 years from the date of its original classification.”

“The will simplify the limitations to “Except when it is clear that the purpose of the examination is to abet or promote or commit crime or wrongdoing or to engage in sheer and idle curiosity.” By the restatement of the exceptions to levels capable of ordinary understanding, this bill reduces instances of brash rejection of requests for access to official information and in the process stresses that the people can be trusted with information which in the first place they ought to know being the source of all government authority,” Casiño said.