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To my dearest colleagues and fellow public servants here at the Department of Budget and Management, magandang umaga po at isang masayang Fiscal New Year sa ating lahat!
Assalamu alaikum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh.
Nagagalak po akong makita at makapiling kayo, mga kapwa ko kawani at lingkod-bayani, ngayong simula ng taon.
Just a few weeks ago, on December 20, 2023, President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr. signed the FY 2024 National Budget into law. The swift passage of this budget is a testament to our commitment and dedication to carrying out our mission—to ensure the equitable, prudent, transparent, and accountable allocation and use of public funds. Again, thank you for your hard work which led us to this milestone. Isa pong karangalan na maka-trabaho kayong lahat.
Now, as we start the new year, we are given a brand-new opportunity to serve the Filipino people more efficiently and effectively. In a few weeks, we will kick off the budget preparation season for FY 2025 through our budget fora—eto na naman tayo!
Sa paggawa po natin ng FY 2025 NEP, bigyang-diin po natin ang sinabi ng ating pangulo noong signing ng 2024 GAA: to honor the taxpayers who make all of these possible.
First of all, we will ensure better and strategic planning for a more effective and efficient national budget. We will strive to improve our processes on budget preparation and execution. Titignan at susuriin po natin ang budget utilization ng mga ahensya ng gobyerno. Nagamit ba ang budget nang maayos para sa taongbayan at para sa pagpapaunlad ng ating bansa? As you all know, one of our major challenges for the past years has always been underspending. Thankfully, national government disbursement accelerated significantly in the latter half of 2023 following our directive for agencies to submit their spending catch-up plans. This year, more than submitting the plans, we need to make sure that there is real improvement in our budget utilization.
Second, in line with our management function, we need to improve bureaucratic efficiency through institutional reforms. Hence, we will continue to push for the passage into law of the National Government Rightsizing Program or the NGRP. The Bill was approved on final reading by the House of Representatives on March 14, 2023, while the Administration’s version of the bill was sponsored by Senator Joel Villanueva on December 5, 2023. Remember, the goal is not laying off nor downsizing, but upgrading the government’s institutional capacity to perform its mandate while ensuring optimal and efficient use of resources.
Speaking of institutional capacity, we will also improve both budget utilization and bureaucratic efficiency through our Public Financial Management Competency Program (PFMCP) which—I am proud to share—has already empowered more than 3,000 PFM practitioners from all over the country. In 2023, we brought our PFMCP around the country to empower LGUs following the Mandanas-Garcia Supreme Court ruling and even to BARMM to help them formulate and implement a dynamic fiscal policy towards the upliftment of the lives of the Bangsamoro. In the medium term, we also hope that our vision of a PFM Institute will come to fruition. This year, we will visit more regions and provinces to support the PFMCP, and also because it is through these visits that we really see what is happening on the ground.
Still towards bureaucratic efficiency, we have also ramped up our digital transformation, resulting in the full adoption of the Integrated Financial Management Information System through Executive Order No. 29 wherein PFM processes will be digitalized, with the Budget and Treasury Management System serving as a centralized database for all government financial operations.
We also launched Project TINA, or the Technical Innovations for the NEP Application, which will replace our existing NEP generation tool with elevated functionality and user experience. We likewise kicked off Project DIME or the Digital Information for Monitoring and Evaluation Project which will use modern technology such as satellites, drones, and geotagging to monitor and evaluate major government projects, especially those related to infrastructure.
Now, we are also getting closer to having a new Government Procurement Reform Act, with the approval of House Bill No. 9648 by the House of Representatives last December 12, 2023. We can all look forward to a procurement system that is more attuned to the changing times. We will even have an e-marketplace for common use supplies under the Procurement Service. And we will release a publication commemorating PS-DBM’s journey over the past 45 years. Abangan n’yo yan.
We will also continue to fulfill our commitments under the Open Government Partnership (OGP). Last year, we were able to showcase all our structural reforms at the 2023 OGP Global Summit held in Tallinn, Estonia. I am most proud that we became one of the pioneers, if not the first, country to institutionalize the Philippine Open Government Partnership (PH-OGP) through Executive Order No. 31. We have also successfully submitted the 6th PH-OGP National Action Plan, our first-ever medium-term action plan on open government. And we have also successfully launched the OGPinas!, a National Advocacy Campaign, engaging hundreds of Filipinos from all over the country to strengthen public participation in governance. This 2024, we will make this campaign even louder as we try to reach more people and encourage even greater public participation. We will also document the development of the PH-OGP since its inception 12 years ago.
Finally, the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC), which we chair, will continue to take the necessary measures to ensure that we remain on track with our Agenda for Prosperity towards economic transformation where no one is left behind including the future generations. You may also look forward to the publication commemorating the 50th anniversary of the DBCC and how it steered the economy over the past decades.
Ang dami nating nagawa nitong 2023. I am so proud of you all. Saludo po ako sa inyong lahat.
And I know we will all soar even higher this 2024. Inshallah.
And who knows baka pati bonus mag-soar higher ng 2024.
Happy New Year, DBM! Marami tayong trabahong hinaharap. Pero huwag po tayong mapapagod sa ating paglingkod sa ating bayan.
Mabuhay po tayong lahat!
Wabillahi Tawfiq Wal Hidaya, Wasalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa Barakatuhu.
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Good morning to all my fellow government officials and employees joining today’s 5th Government Quality Management Program (GQMP) Symposium.
Assalamu alaikum wa Raḥmatullahi wa Barakatuh.
First, I would like to thank the Development Academy of the Philippines, headed by President and CEO Atty. Engelbert C. Caronan Jr., for once again inviting me to deliver a keynote message at this event anchored on the Government Quality Management Program or the GQMP.
As you know, GQMP is a national government program that promotes and enhances quality improvement in the public sector. One of its components features institutionalizing the Service Quality Standards, assuring consistency in the quality of public services. Designed to steer the bureaucracy towards more citizen-centric service delivery, the program puts citizens at the heart of public institutions while instilling a quality culture.
Tulad po ng sinabi ko sa katatapos lamang na 2023 Public Sector Quality and Productivity Improvement Forum—kung sa private sector po ay mayroon tayong tinatawag na customer service, tayo rin po sa gobyerno ay may pinagsisilbihan, at ‘yan ay ang ating mga kababayan. After all, the government exists for and because of the people. This means that, as public servants, our fellow citizens are our clients.
While we are already committed to delivering standardized and high-quality services to the citizens—which is why we are gathered here today—allow me to nevertheless highlight how we can achieve this especially by listening.
Let's take a look at your theme: “Translating Insights from Clients to Standardize Service Experience”.
As the theme suggests, understanding the client’s context is vital in driving the standardization of their service experiences. This is a very good continuation of last year’s theme, “Towards Quality Service for all Citizens” because it espouses the call to actively listen to our clients or our constituents to be able to provide them with quality services that truly respond to their needs.
Likewise, obtaining and utilizing research-based and citizen-centric information in developing and delivering government services—one of the topics to be discussed today—will not be possible without actively listening to the citizens.
Surely, services crafted through active citizen engagement will be more accepted and supported by the people.
Indeed, effective and responsive public services, created and implemented by listening to the voices of the people, should be standardized, enhanced, improved and even institutionalized.
A very notable example of this is the GQMP, which capacitated 990 key officers and staff of Public Sector Organizations in 2022 alone; provided technical assistance to 111 agencies as of December 2022; and certified 200 agencies under the ISO 9001:2015 Standard Quality Management System as of April 2023.
At the Department of Budget and Management, we also make sure to actively listen to our kababayans, and so we are also working hard to contribute to the improved productivity and public service delivery of the bureaucracy through the Fiscal Year 2024 National Budget, as well as through structural reforms such as the proposed amendments to the Government Procurement Reform Act, the continuation of the initiatives of the Philippine Open Government Partnership, and the DBM’s digital transformation roadmap.
As such, I call on each of you to listen and learn from today’s discussions. Most of all, learn to listen to our fellow Filipinos. Dahil ang pagpapabuti ng ating mga programa, sistema, gobyerno, bansa, at maski na ng ating mga sarili ay nagsisimula sa pakikinig. At sa ating pakikinig, matutugunan natin ang tunay na mga pangangailangan ng ating mga kababayan tungo sa Bagong Pilipinas.
Thank you very much. Wabillahi Tawfiq Wal Hidaya, Wasalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa Barakatuhu.
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A pleasant afternoon to everyone joining us in this celebration of passion and dedication.
Assalamu alaikum wa Raḥmatullahi wa Barakatuh.
First, I would like to extend my sincerest congratulations to our awardees. It truly warms my heart to know that the Public Financial Management (PFM) Competency Program is run by very able and passionate individuals. While you come from different backgrounds, you are bound by a common purpose: to promote a strong PFM system in the country resulting in better management of our public resources in order to ultimately uplift the quality of life of our fellow Filipinos.
As Budget Secretary, I have been dedicated to institutionalizing budget reforms and enhancing our PFM initiatives. I firmly believe that a strengthened PFM is our country's springboard to success. It is definitely a key to attaining our Medium-Term Fiscal Framework or MTFF goals and achieving our Agenda for Prosperity.
Personally, I have been exposed to PFM throughout my twenty years of public service. Being in the DBM—the Executive, the Legislature when I was in the Senate, and even Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, nasaksihan ko at natutunan ko kung gaano kahalaga ang PFM sa pagpapatakbo ng gobyerno, sa pamamalakad ng pamahalaan. Hence, I cannot stress enough how instrumental PFM is.
Bukod sa akin, alam ko naman na ang bawat isa po sa inyo rito ay may sari-sariling kuwento—mayroon po diyan sa mga trainor, marahil ‘yung mga tinatawag natin na shy-type noong nagsimula pero kalaunan ay very confident na, o kaya naman ay nahatak o napakiusapan lang na sumama pero ngayon ay naghahatak o nag-iimbita na ng mga kasama sa ating competency program, o ‘yung mga mayroong trainees-turned-colleagues dahil ‘yung dating tinuruan nila ay ngayon nagtuturo na rin sa PFMCP.
Whatever your story may be, today, we celebrate you and your stories. To the pillars of PFMCP, thank you for your leadership and guidance especially during the program’s inception. To our PFM champions, thank you for embodying what being a PFM practitioner truly means. To our pioneer subject-matter experts, thank you for generously sharing your knowledge and time. To our PFMCP mentors, thank you for helping us improve how we deliver the program. To our PFMCP partners, salamat sa relentless support. To our PFMCP speakers, thank you for lending your voice. And, to the PFMCP Team, thank you for making all of this possible.
Sa lahat po ng bumubuo ng PFMCP, taos-puso po akong nagpapasalamat at sumasaludo sa inyo. Kayo po ang dahilan kung bakit nadala na natin ang PFMCP sa iba’t ibang panig ng bansa—mula sa Region I hanggang sa BARMM. Sana po ay patuloy ninyo kaming samahan at suportahan na pag-igihin at pagandahin pa natin lalo ang ating PFM practice sa bansa. At makakaasa po kayong patuloy din ang Department of Budget and Management sa pagsusulong ng mga programang tulad nito.
To end, allow me to quote former U.S. President John F. Kennedy: “Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others…he sends forth a ripple of hope.” Relatedly, I believe that each of us in this room, who willingly shares their skills and heart in forwarding the cause of this program, is a force that creates ripples of change. And I am confident that, collectively, these ripples will become waves of transformational change for the nation and our fellow Filipinos, tungo po sa Bagong Pilipinas.
Maraming salamat po. Mabuhay po kayo! To Usec. Luz [Cantor], thank you po, salamat po at dumating po kayo.
Wabillahi Tawfiq Wal Hidaya, Wasalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa Barakatuhu.
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To NEDA Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan, Undersecretary Joseph J. Capuno of the Investment Programming Group, our stakeholders in “Charting the Path Forward through Partnerships in M&E,” and all our participants in today’s forum, good afternoon.
Assalamu alaikum wa Raḥmatullahi wa Barakatuh.
First, I would like to congratulate the National Economic and Development Authority for the success of the 10th Monitoring and Evaluation or M&E Network Forum. Thank you for providing a venue to showcase the country’s M&E initiatives and for cultivating a community of practice on M&E for the past decade.
I am glad to note that for this year, our plenary and breakout sessions were able to showcase our current efforts towards further strengthening M&E responsive to the 8-Point Socioeconomic Agenda and the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2023-2028.
As you may already know, the proposed national budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2024—the first budget fully prepared under the Administration of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.—continues to pursue our Agenda for Prosperity, this time securing a future-proof and sustainable economy. It will continue to lay the groundwork for the realization of our country’s economic goals identified in the Medium-Term Fiscal Framework (MTFF), the 8-Point Socioeconomic Agenda, and the PDP.
And we are relentlessly working for the passage of this budget amounting to Php 5.768 trillion, or equivalent to 21.7 percent of our GDP, and an increase of 9.5 percent from this year’s level . I am happy to share that we are in the last stretch prior to the signing of our General Appropriations Act as the Senate already passed their version of the General Appropriations Bill last night.
But our work does not end here. In fact, this is just the beginning. What follows is the year-roundbudget execution and most importantly, the accountability phase of the budget cycle wherein agencies must set up and implement M&E mechanisms to ascertain the effectiveness of the programs and projects on which they spend.
Agencies likewise submit regular Financial Accountability Reports, as required by the DBM and the Commission on Audit. We then review the financial and physical performance of agencies against their targets to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of programs and closely monitor agencies’ performances. This is crucial so we can address bottlenecks proactively.
And this is exactly what we did when we issued Circular Letter No. 2023-10 last August, wherein we required all government agencies to submit “catch-up plans” to facilitate budget execution for the rest of FY 2023. Through this issuance, we also tried to ascertain the underlying causes or reasons for underperformance and undertake measures to address them.
Thankfully, National Government disbursement accelerated significantly from 93.4 percent of the program as of June 2023 to 98.9 percent as of September. This was mainly driven by the robust disbursement in the third quarter, reaching Php 3.82 trillion as of the end of September. DBM has also already released roughly 97.2 percent of our 2023 National Budget as of the end of September, while our Government Final Consumption Expenditure accelerated to 6.7 percent in the third quarter of this year.
And, I am very happy to note that all these contributed to our economy achieving a 5.9 percent growth for the third quarter of this year, significantly up from 4.3 percent in the second quarter as we pushed for greater efficiency in budget utilization through a whole-of-government approach.
Another crucial aspect of the budget accountability phase is citizen participation. To ensure transparency, DBM ensures the online availability, timeliness, and comprehensiveness of key budget documents including the People’s Budget series–the less technical yet comprehensive version of the government’s proposed and enacted national budgets.
We also ensure that citizens are able to participate in the monitoring of programs and projects through the Philippine Open Government Partnership (PH-OGP) which was recently institutionalized through Executive Order No. 31, s. 2023. This aims to ensure that the open government values of transparency, civic participation, accountability, and technological innovation are embedded in government policies and programs. And to further expand the open government space, we have successfully launched the OGPinas! National Advocacy Campaign, engaging hundreds of Filipinos around the country in pursuit of strengthening public participation in governance. We just conducted its final leg for this year last week in Davao City.
As you can see, monitoring and evaluation and people’s participation are crucial in ensuring that every budget allocation, decision, and program implementation will benefit the Filipino people. And so we are grateful for M&E platforms such as this forum.
Again, congratulations to NEDA and our M&E partners and stakeholders! Rest assured that the DBM is one with you as you build the competence of individuals and institutions in the creation and use of M&E in the public sector, and as you consolidate the efforts of communities on M&E, all towards the achievement of our Agenda for Prosperity.
Thank you very much. Wabillahi Tawfiq Wal Hidaya, Wasalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa Barakatuhu.
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My heartfelt greetings to our fellow champions and advocates of open government and good governance!
Assalamu alaikum wa Raḥmatullahi wa Barakatuh.
I am Budget Secretary Amenah F. Pangandaman, Chair of the Philippine Open Government Partnership.
It is my pleasure to deliver this keynote, albeit remotely, for the Eighth Academic Days on Open Government and Digital Issues. I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to the organizers of this conference for this platform to discuss open government and digital transformation—two of my top advocacies and priorities as Budget Secretary. Much more so, to share this message not only with my fellow Filipinos but also with professors, experts, and practitioners from around the world.
I cannot emphasize enough the crucial role that the academe plays in promoting a country’s social development and economic growth. Strengthening knowledge networks and platforms empowers our citizens and enables them to engage more in what we, in government, are doing.
I firmly believe that achieving a genuinely transformative and open government requires a whole-of-society approach—one that involves collaboration and co-creation among the government, the private sector, the academe, and civil society. Hence, the Philippine Open Government Partnership, or PH-OGP, has taken great strides to establish mechanisms to achieve this.
The Philippines is in fact one of the eight founding members of the Open Government Partnership or OGP, although even before joining the OGP, the Philippines had already facilitated high levels of engagement between the state and civil society.
But the OGP presented us with the opportunity to formalize efforts in opening up the government and mobilizing coalitions to bring issues that matter on the ground to the government’s attention.
This has resulted in various reforms with impactful outcomes.
For instance, the Citizen Participatory Audit Program of our Commission on Audit, which opened up the state’s auditing process to citizens, resulted in greater efficiency and effectiveness in the use of public resources and was hailed as an OGP Bright Spot Awardee in 2013.
In 2015, when the Philippines committed to the reform of reducing bureaucratic red tape in doing business in its 4th National Action Plan (NAP), the country’s ranking in the World Bank’s Doing Business Report improved. From 138 out of 189 countries in 2013, our rank went up to 108 in 2014 and 95 in 2015. More significantly, investments increased by 10 percent over the same period.
In 2016, we were recognized to be the first among over 50 countries to have achieved satisfactory progress in implementing the 2016 Extractives Industries Transparency Initiative Standard.
During the pandemic, the Philippines was one of the four countries and the only Asian country to have achieved an adequate level of accountability in its early COVID-19 fiscal policies driven by the Fiscal Openness Program of the Department of Budget and Management.
Alongside this, the country’s score in the 2021 Open Budget Survey remained above the global average, positioning the Philippines within the top 30 among over 120 participating countries. I am proud to share that the Philippines is considered a leader in the ASEAN Region in budget transparency.
Beyond these accolades, for me, the most momentous win for open government in the country has been the institutionalization of open government. With the support of our President, President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr., we now have Executive Order (EO) No. 31, series of 2023. This is a landmark EO through which the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches—despite being independent of each other—will now work closely to synchronize and complement open government initiatives.
On top of EO 31, we continue to advocate for open government through the following:
- We are bringing PH-OGP to the local level through our Open Government National Advocacy Campaign to Strengthen Public Participation, which we call OGPinas.
- For the youth, we have conducted the first-ever National OGP Consultation with Adolescents and Children.
- Towards digitalization for open government, our President, PBBM, has also signed Executive Order No. 29, which provides for the digital transformation of the bureaucracy through the full adoption of the Integrated Financial Management Information Systems.
- We are also reforming our 20-year-old Government Procurement Reform Act to include a public participation mechanism wherein at least two observers—one from the private sector and the other from a Civil Society Organization—will be invited to sit in procurement proceedings.
- We were also one of the selected countries to receive the grant from the 2023 Lift Impact Accelerator Program of the Open Contracting Partnership.
Finally, we are currently preparing our 6th PH-OGP National Action Plan, the country's first-ever medium-term open government action plan.
With all of these initiatives and endeavors, I hope that we can live up to the kind words of OGP Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Pradhan at the OGP Global Summit in Tallinn, Estonia wherein he lauded the Philippines for being [and I quote] "a trailblazer in open governance not only in Asia but also within the partnership."
We still have a lot to do in terms of open government but with your invaluable support—our fellow champions and advocates from different parts of the world—it is our fervent hope that we can write an OGP story that ends with a dream come true: a government that is inclusive, transparent, accountable, responsive, and truly open.
Thank you very much. Wabillahi Tawfiq Wal Hidaya, Wasalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa Barakatuhu.
Speeches
The DBM Citizen's Charter
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