BAGUIO CITY – Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan underscored that House Bill (HB) 5343 or the proposed bill seeking the establishment of an autonomous region in the Cordillera contains sufficient safety nets that will prevent future regional officials from abusing their delegated power, especially in the distribution of the share of local governments from the usual Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) and the annual subsidy that will be provided by the national government to the regional government and the concerned local governments.
The local chief executive pointed out in the case of the IRA, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) will still download to the concerned local governments their mandatory share while the regional government will also be released its share without the interventions of whoever will be the regional officials to avoid the practice of patronage politics in the said instance.
Further, he claimed that the proposed autonomy law already provides the pertinent details in the distribution of whatever subsidy that will be granted by the national government to the autonomous regional government and the local governments that will embrace autonomy in the future.
In the transitory provisions of the proposed autonomy law, the national government shall provide the autonomous regional government with an annual subsidy of at least P10 billion for the first five years of its existence and an annual subsidy of at least P5 billion for the succeeding five years to allow the region to be fully developed that will guarantee socio-economic growth in the countryside during the subsidy period.
Under the same provisions of the law, 20 percent of the subsidy will go to the autonomous regional government while 6 percent will remain as the region’s trust fund so that future component or chartered cities that will be created will be able to be provided the mandated subsidy in the future. Of the 74 percent balance, 40 percent will be equally divided among the 1,133 barangays around the region, 35 percent will be divided among the 75 municipalities, 23 percent will be equally divided by the 6 provinces and the chartered city of Baguio while 2 percent will go to the component city of Tabuk.
In terms of the regular budget of regional line agencies, Domogan explained that HB 5343 provides that the budgets of the line agencies will only serve as an attachment of the proposed annual budget of the autonomous regional government so that only lawmakers from the region can object to it contrary to prevailing practice in the House wherein an objection from a lawmaker from any part of the country concerning the budget of some agencies will delay the approval of the budget of agencies that affect those who are not objecting to it.
According to him, after the approval of the national budget, the appropriations for the regional line agencies will be directly downloaded to the concerned agencies for the implementation of their programmed projects while the role of the autonomous regional government will be to closely monitor the implementation of the prescribed projects to ensure transparency and accountability among implementing agencies and to prevent issues that will be raised on patronage politics which is the reason of the failure of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) in the past., thus, the provisions of HB 5343 has been tailor-fit for the needs of the Cordillera and it is an improvement of the previous autonomy laws. By Dexter A. See
