Budget administrators' role crucial to economic growth
Secretary Cerge Remonde of the Presidential Management Staff said that the government is pursuing programs and projects that will not only prime the economy but make social payback immediate and substantial.
Secretary Remonde told some seven hundred (700) budget officials from all over the country who gathered in Iloilo City for the Philippine Association for Government Budget Administration (PAGBA) Seminar-Workshop that "your role as budget administrators is crucial to further growth in these major fronts."
"The budget process, from budget call to budget authorization, but more so in budget execution and monitoring, should provide impetus to, rather than impede, overall progress," Secretary Remonde stressed during the PAGBA meeting with its theme "Innovate or Stagnate: Period of Adjustments in 2007."
Remonde said that under President Arroyo's Super Regions, massive infrastructure building program have been launched that will connect major seaports and airports, road networks and sea routes, and even the cyber digital highway.
The national government, he said, will increase its infrastructure spending by almost 60% a year until 2010, to fund priority infrastructure projects.
"This year the government is allocating P170 billion for capital outlay or 15.1% of the total budget. Of this amount, P120.44 billion is for infrastructure spending.
Remonde congratulated the budget managers "for having made the balanced budget not just a legitimate aspiration, but a reality that is truly at hand."
The PMS head said that another phase of economic reform which President Arroyo calls "social payback" will be implemented to bring down and back to the Filipino people the benefits of the government?s fiscal reforms.
"The challenge we must address, as partners in bringing our country into the First World in the next decade, we must be resolved in the context of our individual and institutional ethic and values," Remonde concluded.
(T.Villavert/PIA)