I worked in the Budget Commission way back in the 70's, during martial law. Actually, the granting of budgets per government agency was done through budget hearings where the officials would defend the amounts they had put on paper for Marcos to allocate to each one.
My own boss then, Rey Abella, married to a Diokno and a relative of Ben Diokno told us that the nature of budgeting then was incremental. Taas ng taas ang perang binibigay, hindi bumababa. So what happened then was that the budgets kept going up and up. Why so? I can only surmise that after enjoying the perks of their allocations, the budgeteers wanted more and more.
Finance officers lined up in the rooms where budget hearings were called, reciting platitudes, about the need to raise the standards for the people's existence. Yet we knew that as the budgets were released,the officers were getting a cut from them. I remember seeing a budget officer under the commission sporting golden rings with huge diamond stones, and another officer known for having many houses despite the meager salaries that a government employee should get. One Ministry of Human Settlements employee had the temerity to ask for ten percent per approval of a housing loan.
But it was not ten percent. In the Development Bank of the Philippines, the going "patong" or now called "tongpats" rate for release of loans was 20%.
Mr. Ben Diokno's article below does not cite how much the current rate is now. It would be good to know, or should we resurrect the investigation done during Jun Lozada's testimony?
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