TRIBUNE: DÉJÀ VU
MANILA, FEBRUARY 28, 2011 (TRIBUNE) Before fund donors, Noynoy boasted of his supposed achievements in the economic and fiscal fields during the eight months that he has been in office.
He cited before the Philippine Development Forum (PDF) the other day the rebidding of overpriced contracts, the adoption of zero-based budgeting and the increase in the budget for the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program as among his achievements.
He conveniently makes no mention of the defense recently inked with his appointed officials, as these were clearly overpriced. Still, let Noynoy stay in dreamland as one day he will definitely wake up to the nightmare of having done nothing all throughout his stay in Malacañang and will go down in history as having made the Philippines worse off than any other time.
But there was a reason for him to come up with yet another boast as Noynoy was again reminding many of Gloria who waxes in exuberant pride about non-existent achievements, which path he is following, but in a worse way, as the achievements of the Arroyo regime, he has the gall to pass off as his.
The bottomline shows that nothing has been achieved substantially to boost the economy and government finances.
Just recently the Department of Budget and Management announced a likely P310 billion deficit for last year, which is the highest ever for the country, even beating the erstwhile record of P298 billion shortfall in 2009 that was supposed the crowning glory of the corrupt administration of Gloria.
As in the previous administration, the problem remains in revenue collections which seem to have been faced with the similar problems of the past.
During Gloria's watch, it was considered that tax evaders had a field day and corruption in the collection agencies was so widespread that both the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and the Bureau of Customs (BoC) never met targets.
Judging on the collection trend under Noynoy, not much seems to have been achieved in terms of reforms. And if he thinks graft and corruption no longer exist in these bureaus, he really should have another think coming — that is, if he has the capacity to think.
For last year, the BIR collected P822.4 billion below an P860.4 billion target while the BoC raised P259 billion, also missing a P280 billion goal.
Strangely, amid the bloated fiscal gap, the Aquino administration stepped up on spending last December with Budget Secretary Florencio Abad saying that Noynoy's economic managers noted there remains a fiscal space for them to spend.
Abad indicated that the deficit should be seen in relation to the expanding economy and that a 3.6 percent deficit compared to the growth in gross domestic product (GDP) makes the budget gap manageable.
The bottomline, however, is the money that needs to be raised to plug the budget gap, which is mostly borrowings from domestic and foreign sources.
Latest figures as of November last year, showed the debt stock had reached P4.719 trillion, an increase of P40 billion from October 2010 debt level of P4.679 trillion or a debt of P50,202 for each of the 94 million Filipinos.
Of the amount, P2.002 trillion was owed to foreign creditors while P2.717 trillion were obligations with domestic lenders.
On the employment front, the number of jobless Filipinos last year was 2.86 million, higher than the 2.83 million unemployed in 2009. The highest unemployment rate was registered at 11.6 percent in the National Capital Region, which included Manila.
The number of underemployed workers, or those who spend less than the regular eight-hour workday, rose to 6.76 million from 6.69 million in 2009.
The jobless rate and the employment condition in the Philippines thus are considered among the worst in Southeast Asia.
With those dismal figures, what achievement is Noynoy talking about?
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Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
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