Source: Philstar.com
MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine Sports Commission will be forced to do more with less if it doesn’t get an increase in its budget from Congress for next year.
Chairman Richie Garcia yesterday said it will be difficult for the government sports agency to implement all its programs with only P168 million from the General Appropriations Act.
The PSC, through former chairman Harry Angping, proposed a budget of P740 million for 2011, but the Department of Budget only endorsed P168 million, or less than 20 percent of it, to Congress.
Garcia sat down with Sen. Edgardo Angara of the Senate finance committee yesterday to defend their proposed budget.
“To be fair with the DBM, the P168 million it proposed for next year is a draft of our budget of P224 for this year. All the government departments and agencies are facing budget cuts for next year,” he said.
“But we will try to defend our original proposal because P168 million will not be enough for us to come up with a decent grassroots program,” said the PSC chief.
The money from Congress is supposed to be spent on grassroots development, infrastructure, including maintenance and repair of sports facilities, and the salaries of the PSC officials and employees.
The other bulk of the PSC money, the National Sports Development Fund, comes from cash-rich government agencies like Pagcor, PCSO and the Philippine Racing Commission. It’s the hand that feeds the national athletes, their coaches and all the NSAs (national sports associations) recognized by the Philippine Olympic Committee.
Garcia said the problem can be solved if Pagcor gives the PSC what it is mandated by law that it should remit to the sports agency five percent of its monthly gross income. Currently, the average monthly remittance of Pagcor to the PSC is P45 million.
But there are different interpretations of the law, and what’s happening now is that the PSC gets five percent of what’s left of Pagcor’s monthly income after the five percent franchise tax and 50 percent share of the national government are deducted.
“So, technically we’re just getting 2.5 percent. The law states five percent of the monthly gross. And there’s no other way to define gross. It means the whole income, and not five percent of what’s left after all the deductions,” said Garcia.
He said the PSC is seeking the help of Congress or even President Aquino regarding its Pagcor share, and is optimistic that they will get the amount of help they need.
“Maybe through proper representation we can get five percent of the gross. That would mean an additional fund of around P500 million a year for the PSC. That will be enough to cover the reduced budget from Congress,” Garcia explained.
“When you ask for more money, you need to defend why you need the money. And that’s what we’re going to do with the Senate and the House. We will explain to them what happened before, what we’re doing now and what we’re going to do in the future.”
Garcia sees a co-relation between the annual budget for sports and the number of medals the country wins in international competitions like the SEA Games, Asian Games or even the Olympics.
“In 2005 we spent around P900 million for the SEA Games and we ended up number one. Then the following year our budget was cut into half and we went down to number six in the 2007 SEA Games. There must be a co-relation between the money and the output.
“That’s our point of view,” Garcia added.
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