PASSAGE early this week of the 2010 national budget amounting to P1.54-trillion came close on the heels of the disturbing report on the voluntary resignation last week of the Bureau of Internal Revenue commissioner.

The said official voluntarily resigned reportedly out of delicadeza for his failure to meet the target collection set for the agency.

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Tax collection from January to September 2009 reached P557 billion but fell short of the official target of P596.2 billion and much lower than the P587.9 billion collected in the same period last year.

As a consequence, the government appears to be facing a financial deficit in the coming year.

But this is a circumstance that is not really alien to the national government, which has always been operating on a deficit and surviving through annual borrowings from international banks.

Sharing

The recently passed annual budget had the Department of Education getting the biggest annual outlay of P172.8 billion, followed by the public works and highways department with P105.3 billion, the interior and local government with P65.4 billion, national defense with P62.7 billion, etc.

The amount of appropriation in the annual budget a department or agency receives is indicative of government priority.

Thus, in the currently approved annual appropriation, education holds the highest priority, which is as it should be, followed by the DPWH as a far second, and the DILG and DND as third and fourth.

Priorities

In the view of public administration management experts, the way the priorities have been set is candidly sound and in keeping with public management budgeting practice among democratic nations at peace.

Otherwise, if our country’s peace and order condition has been under grave threat, the national defense budget would have gotten the biggest share of the financial gravy next year.

Fortunately, we are not under such threat now.

However, as a sad commentary of our on-going national deficit spending practice, we are disbursing more funds than what we can really afford to.

Set aside in the current national budget is P88.2 billion increase (to P340.8 billion) for interest payments of the republic’s outstanding debts.

This indicates that the country’s current debts are getting the largest share of the nation’s operational appropriations act.