On August 15, 2018, Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Secretary Benjamin Diokno introduced to a large meeting of chief executives from various American, local, and international companies the current developments and priorities of the DBM during the General Membership Luncheon Meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines in Taguig City.

As guest speaker, Secretary Diokno discussed the chronic underspending of the national government and how it can be reduced and eventually eliminated with a cash-based budgeting system. He said that “in the past, a major weakness in our public finances had been slow and inefficient spending… in a cash-based budget, contracts intended to be implemented for the fiscal year should be fully delivered, inspected, and accepted by the end of the fiscal year.”

The Secretary also shared the Duterte administration’s objective to institutionalize cash-based budgeting for future administrations to follow. He declared that “...we filed a bill in Congress called the Budget Modernization Bill to make these reforms irreversible. This has already been approved by the Lower House last March 2018 while pending deliberations in the Senate.”

Moreover, the Secretary presented other budget reforms such as the General Appropriations Act as release document, the Treasury Single Account (TSA), the Budget and Treasury Management System, and Project DIME.

Also, the Secretary shared that for 2017 the Philippines received an Open Budget Index score of 67, which ranks the country in first place in terms of fiscal openness in Asia. “We will not stop here as we plan to be the best budget system in South East Asia, if not all of Asia” he added.

At the end of his presentation, the Secretary asserted that “…we are confident of the passage of a cash-based national budget before the year ends. We will stand our ground and not waver in our reform agenda.”

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