[ANALYSIS] The Dutertenomics budget of misplaced priorities

As Congress tackles the proposed budget for 2021, priorities and trade-offs always have to be looked into when citizens scrutinize the budget. With massive job losses and depreciation in incomes, taxpayers are entitled to know where each centavo would go.

Unfortunately, the 2021 budget seem to be a business-as-usual, pork-laden measure that would also fund repression through heightened counter-insurgency measures, including a draconian Anti-Terror Law. While trying not to overspend, government’s priorities in the budget are misplaced and miserable to Filipinos.and whether incurring more debt would benefit majority of Filipinos now and in the future.

So, the fiscal space for new programs and projects is just around P841.7 billion, or roughly 20.5% of the total budget. New allocations would include a P2.5 billion for the COVID-19 vaccine next year but a high P16.4-B for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict. The security sector also got the biggest slices through Department of the Interior and Local Government with P246.1-B and the Department of National Defense with P209.1-B. A big chunk of the budget allocates Filipino taxpayers’ money for fighting communist armed groups while leaving out our defenses in the West Philippine Sea being taken over by China.

With poverty incidence sliding back to 2015 levels, 60% of our people without any form of social protection, massive job losses, and one-third of registered businesses closing, Filipinos especially the poor will not get the needed support to tide them over.

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