The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has released the pension requirements of retired Military and Uniformed Personnel (MUP) under the Armed Forces of the Philippines - General Headquarters (AFP-GHQ), Philippine National Police (PNP), Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP), and Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP).

Particularly, the DBM released P29.9 billion to the AFP-GHQ, P21.7 billion to the PNP, P1.9 billion to the BFP, and around P731 million to the BJMP. The release order for uniformed personnel of the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority shall be issued upon its submission of the required Special Budget Request to the DBM.

The current base pay scale is stipulated in Congress Joint Resolution (JR) No. 1, s. 2018, “Joint Resolution Authorizing the Increase in Base Pay of Military and Uniformed Personnel in the Government, and for Other Purposes.” It may be recalled that JR No. 1, s. 2018 was passed on January 1, 2018 fulfilling President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s promise of increasing the base pay of all MUP. However, the indexation of pension to the current base pay scale was suspended for FY 2018 under the same JR No. 1 which directed that “pending the review of the current MUP pension system by the legislative and executive branches of the government xxx the indexation of the pension of retired MUP with the base pay of those in the active service shall be suspended with respect to the base pay increase authorized in this Joint Resolution.” It was further provided that, “this suspension shall be automatically lifted on January 1, 2019 or upon the effectivity of a pension reform law, whichever comes earlier.”

Accordingly, the recently released amounts already include the adjustment of the pension of the retired MUPs as indexed to the base pay scale of MUP in the active service covering the period June to December 2019 based on the available funds as certified by the Bureau of the Treasury.

 (30)