2009 BUDGET TO FOCUS ON JOB CREATION, INFRA SPENDING AND HUMAN CAPITAL INVESTMENTS - ANGARA

Senator Edgardo J. Angara today said that the government's FY 2009 budget should be dedicated to helping our people by providing jobs and livelihood through infra expenditures and human capital investments in order to hurdle the current global financial crisis.

"Our 2009 budget will focus on providing jobs and livelihood to our people, because by next year our economic managers have reported that our economy may be hit by the full impact of this global economic recession," said Angara who is now the Chair of the Senate Finance Committee.

He added, "This can be done by doing more projects, mostly vital infrastructure, which could help us mitigate the impacts of economic slow down. The multiplier effects of these infrastructure projects are boundless, think about jobs potentially generated, boosting of agriculture production and tourism impacts, among others."

National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) data, however, showed that budget allocations for major infrastructure projects during the first half of 2008 were measly spent.

Only Php 629 million of the total Php 4.6 billion allocated for railway projects have been spent during the first six months of the year..

For seaport and airport projects, on the other hand, only Php 310 million out of Php 4.7 billion was disbursed.

On waterworks projects, a miserable twenty percent (20%) - or Php 965 million out of the total Php 609 billion - was spent.

Out of the total Php 13.8 billion for foreign-assisted projects only Php 1 billion has been spent.

Angara stressed that RP's economic growth and efforts to attain global competitiveness have been stifled due to our failure to spend on much needed infrastructure projects. Also, employment rate might be slowing down because of the poor public infrastructure accomplishments of government.

"Recognizing this fact, the Committee on Finance has directed the Department of Budget and Management to review their budget disbursing process in order to facilitate expenditure for public infrastructure. Other infra agencies, were also directed to review their respective internal processes. These reforms would hopefully translate to more infra spending, hence, job generation," added Angara.

Angara, on the other hand, reminded that the country should also look into the scenario of a global economic rebound which he expects to come 30 to 33 months from now. The senator said that we should continue our drive for global competitiveness through human capital investments.

In order to attain this, Angara said that the country should focus its education expenditures on four priorities namely: faculty development, facilities improvement, student scholarship and research to improve RP's higher education competitiveness. This, he said, would prepare us for the morning-after scenario wherein global economies are expected to rebound.