By Johnny Dayang
CONGRESS has approved this week House Bill 7302 which could revolutionize the country’s budget management system and ensure public spending integrity and accountability through greater transparency, fiscal responsibility, efficiency and effectiveness.
Certified urgent by President Duterte, HB 7302, consolidated 14 separate bills. It is titled “An Act to Reform the Budget Process by Enforcing Greater Accountability in Public Financial Management (PFM), Promoting Fiscal Sustainability, Strengthening Congress’ Power of the Purse, Instituting an Integrated PFM System, and Increasing Budget Transparency and Participation.”
Albay Rep. Joey Sarte Salceda, House appropriations committee vice chair, steered the measure’s plenary deliberations to approval. Its strategic elements include the following: 1) It shifts from an obligation-based budgeting to an annual cash-based budgeting; 2) It enforces a one-fund-concept wherein monies due the national government accrue to the general fund remitted to the national treasury; legally authorized are limited to trust fund, revolving and retained funds;
3) Special Purpose Funds shall be limited to National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Fund, Contingent Fund, and the Statutory Shares of LGUs the details of which could not be determined during the budget preparation stage;
4) Savings can be declared only after project completion; unused funds for discontinued or abandoned projects are not savings;
5) In cases of discontinued projects, no funding for them shall be allowed in the next two fiscal years;
6) It authorizes constitutional officers to use savings to cover shortfalls in their existing appropriations; and 7) It provides integrated financial management information system, a single portal of all financial transactions and reports to be used by national government agencies, government-owned or controlled corporations (GOCCs) and LGUs to integrate budgeting, cash management and accounting processes.
The measure imposes sanctions for compliance failure in reporting and posting, among which are:
1) DBM shall not approve requests for allotment releases under the negative list;
2) COA may disallow expenditures; and 3) Disbursements may be rendered void.
As Salceda points out, HB 7302 “ensures accountability and integrity in the use of public resources through transparency, fiscal responsibility, result-orientation, efficiency and effectiveness through an integrated system of planning, programming, budgeting, management, internal control, accounting, reporting and review of public finances.”
It promotes “people empowerment in the management of public resources by enforcing their right to access to information on, and to contribute in the formulation and implementation of the financial affairs of the government,” he added.