CONGRESSIONAL insertions made on the national budget could lead to financing poorly prepared projects, according to the 蝌蚪传媒 (蝌蚪传媒), government’s own think tank.
In a research paper, 蝌蚪传媒 Senior Research Fellow Adoracion M. Navarro and former research analyst Jokkaz S. Latigar said congressional insertions are replacement projects that are brought in through “political intervention” when the budget is being finalized.
Unfortunately, Navarro and Latigar said, these projects have not gone through due diligence such as thorough planning and consultation with stakeholders.
“The issue regarding the ‘For Later Release’ funds is complex and has deep political economy ramifications. It seems to be a battle of wills on project implementation between two major political forces,” Navarro and Latigar said.
“On one end are legislators who always find ways to insert new or expanded line items into the budget. On the other end is the President, who can resort to post-GAA [General Appropriations Act] procedures that enable him to approve/reject the release of funds related to every Congressional insertion,” they added.
They said these congressional insertions are composed largely of road transport projects. Since these did not go through due diligence, some become unfeasible projects that can create a bottleneck and delay project implementation.
“This is one reason for the existence of the ‘for later release’ funds category in the government budget. Unless a project has undergone proper evaluation [e.g., project feasibility, documentation, or clearances], the DBM [Department of Budget and Management] cannot release the funds immediately. This way, the government can mitigate the potential misuse of allocations,” the authors said.
In order to address these insertions, the government needs reform champions and efforts to strengthen project identification and prioritization at the Regional Development Council (RDC) level.
“Tracking how many and what percentage of RDC-endorsed projects make it to the GAA may be institutionalized. Moreover, it helps if there is more transparency in the accounting for and reporting of RDC priorities, and greater assurance on right-of-way readiness of projects in the RDC list,” Navarro and Latigar said.
The study showed that while there have been improvements in the country’s national roads as only 1.25 percent of them are gravel roads and 0.09 percent remain earth roads, progress has been “uneven.”
Navarro and Latigar cited a 2017 survey conducted among select local government units (LGUs) that about 47 percent of their municipal roads remain unpaved.
Based on the data presented in the study, as of 2017, 8,739.07 kilometers of roads are paved with concrete and 499.57 kilometers are paved with asphalt. However, 4,998.38 kilometers of roads were gravel roads and 3,333.03 kilometers were earth roads.
They also found that there were more local roads that are rated as “poor” to “bad” than those rated as “good” to “fair.”
In 2021, of the 8,546 bridges nationwide, 4,361 were in good condition; 3,738 were fair; 372 were poor; and 75 were considered in bad condition.
Further, the authors found that previous faulty practices in farm-to-market road (FMR) implementation continue to weaken connectivity.
“The standard costing of FMR [at P12 million per kilometer at the time the KIIs were conducted] is not realistic as it applies only to straight roads,” the authors added.
The authors said that in 2020, almost half of the budget for farm-to-market roads was under the for-later-release mode.
Since these roads had no accompanying RDC endorsements, the funds were not immediately made available to implement these projects.
