The City Budget Office recently said that the city’s one hundred twenty-eight barangays play a crucial role in bringing about economic stability.
City Budget Officer lawyer Leticia O. Clemente claimed that one way of realizing the said role is capacitating barangay officials on financial management.
She added the monies flowing into the city’s barangay coffers amount to P653 million, 87 percent of which comes from their share from the national government’s National Tax Allocation (NATA) and only 13 percent is derived from barangay sources.
The city budget officer claimed that the aforesaid amount is not actually much but if funds at the barangay level are managed efficiently through timely appropriation and approval of their respective annual budgets, this will go a long way to supplement the city’s annual budget.
Clemente pointed out that every year, only about 10 percent of the city’s barangays have approved and reviewed budgets at the beginning of the budget year, thus, the city budget office conducted an orientation workshop to deploy the barangay budgeting system last month.
According to her, some 466 barangay officials and 109 Sangguniang Kabataan (SK officials attended the said workshop that paved the way for the availability of the barangay electronic budget system for use in the annual budget preparation up to the review by the local legislative body.
She pointed out that to compliment the city budget office’s actions, Councilor Rocky M. Aliping will be sponsoring a resolution in the local legislative body mandating all barangays to prepare and submit their budgets for review using the electronic budgeting system.
“Our goal is for the barangays to follow the prescribed timelines in preparing their annual and supplemental budgets. A delay in the implementation of their programs, projects and activities under the budget is also a denial of the services their constituents need,” Clemente stressed. By Dexter A. See
