Seeing no delay in 2020 budget, DBM starts preparing 2021 spending plan

With no delay seen in the passage of the P4.1-trillion 2020 national budget, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) started work on the 2021 budget proposal.

President Rodrigo Duterte’s economic team would determine the budget ceiling for 2021 next week.

Acting Budget Secretary Wendel E. Avisado told the Inquirer on Tuesday, Dec. 2, that the Cabinet-level Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) is to meet on Dec. 11 to lay out the proposed 2021 national budget.

The DBM already issued the national budget call for fiscal year 2021 through National Budget Memorandum No. 133 issued last Nov. 29.

In the memorandum, Avisado said the next budget proposal will reflect continued implementation of budget reforms, like transition to yearly cash budgeting system and consolidation of national government funds in a single treasury account.

The 2021 budget will adopt cash-based budgeting, under which allotments must be obligated and spent in one year, unlike the current obligation-based system wherein funds expire after two years.

Last September, Duterte issued Executive Order (EO) No. 91 adopting the cash budgeting system starting fiscal year 2019.

Avisado said there would be “greater focus” on pushing proposals that are ready for implementation through “better procurement planning, programming of projects and activities and coordination among agencies.”

Agencies, he said, “are expected to anchor their budget proposals on more concrete program plans and designs.”

These should list “key procurement and implementation milestones, specific beneficiaries and improvement in monitoring,” Avisado said.

He said the 2021 budget would mirror the Duterte administration’s 10-point socioeconomic agenda which seeks to slash poverty rate to 14 percent by 2022, the year Duterte steps down.

There would be “continued emphasis on infrastructure spending,” said Avisado.

But increased infrastructure spending, he added, “will not in any way detract from the full support provided to the poorest, climate change and disaster risk vulnerable areas.”

Edited by TSB