The City Budget Office said that the local government was able to pioneer in going paperless in the entire budget cycle that included the procurement process aimed at facilitating and sanitizing the essential processes.
City Budget Officer Leticia O. Clemente claimed that taking on from the vision of a smart, resilient and sustainable city, her office has long been engaged in the concept of smart budgeting.
She added that the city’s Local Finance Committee had initiated and institutionalized basic processes if only to keep the city attuned with the rapidly changing smart fiscal policies.
For the first quarter, the local government will be expanding the process to the barangay budget system.
Clemente pointed out that the review process of barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) budgets will now be done online where the system will be ready for integration to the ongoing development of a legislative management system of the local legislative body.
Further, the city budget office has in its work plan this year the capacity development trainings for barangays on planning and financial management.
She underscored that the city government will also reinforce the bottoms-up approach to planning and budgeting at the barangay level to allow seamless implementation of the city’s programs that will primarily benefit the barangays.
She emphasized that the ongoing efforts of the city government to institute the needed reforms is part of the local finance committee’s primordial function of ensuring that public funds are wisely spent to guarantee that the public will benefit most from the implementation of the said initiatives.
According to her, once there will be more funds saved by the city government from the implementation of the innovations, these will be plowed back to the people through the provision of funds for other development projects beneficial in uplifting their overall welfare. By Dexter A. See
