Guvs, Mayors Elated for their Next Year’s Big Budget

 

DUE TO SC MANDANAS RULING

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

Mayors and governors in the Philippines are elated these days of the more than fifty percent hike next year of their internal revenue allotment (IRA) due to the Mandanas Ruling.

“My town would surely benefit from this budget increase because my first term would end,” Pangasinan’s capital town Lingayen Mayor Leopoldo Bataoil told this newspaper about the spike of the first class town’s IRA from the national government.

The Mandanas Ruling by the Supreme Court in 2018 and confirmed with finality in 2019 dictated that the IRA of the local government units (LGU) in towns and provinces are programmed to increase by 55 percent in the 2022 national budget, reaching Php1.08 trillion or 4.8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product compared to 3.5 percent of GDP in 2021.

MANDANAS RULING BENEFICIARIES (from left photo clockwise) Pangasinan Governor Amado Espino, III, Cotabato Governor Nancy Catamco, and Lingayen Mayor Leopoldo Bataoil.

“It will bode well for the province of Cotabato,” the central Mindanao’s province Administrator Efren Pinol told this writer when they met recently in Rosales, Pangasinan.

Governor Nancy Catamco- a former nine year’s congresswoman-is the province’s chief executive.

Aguilar, Pangasinan Mayor Roldan Sagles said that his third class town will tremendously benefit because of the Mandanas Doctrine especially the expansion of the twenty percent (20%) development fund where he could build more infrastructure projects next year.

Despite the rustic municipality’s limited budget based on the absence of the Supreme Court’s ruling, he procured in his more than two years’ stint new dump truck, new firetruck, new ambulance, and constructed new municipal warehouse, and solar street lights, P30 million evacuation center in Barangay Buer, newly designed plaza, more farm to market roads, Corona Virus Disease-19 building, and distribution late this year of 16 Mitsubishi utility vans to each of the 16 barangays.

“I could enjoy it because my (first) term will end on June next year,” he said about the stout annual budget next year of the town he and his department heads deliberate this year.

According to Bataoil’s public information officer Mae Viray-Rueda, the town has a present P326 million annual budget.

“P256 million internal revenue allotment and P70 million in local tax collection,” she said.

If that budget will be appropriated next year, the P256 million will be padded by P140.8 (55 percent as dictated by Mandanas Ruling) or P396.8 from the IRA plus the P70 million local revenues like the business and real property taxes or a total of P466.8 million a year.

It will be bigger if it is the IRA of the billions of pesos annual budgeted LGU of the province of Pangasinan under Governor Amado Espino, III and the P500 million IRA’s of the P1 billion a year’s Dagupan City under Mayor Brian Lim.

The Mandanas Doctrine clarifies that the share from the IRA of the LGUs does not exclude other national taxes like customs duties.  The filing of the case in the Supreme Court was the national government exclusion in the introduction of the Local Government Code in 1991 of other national taxes like customs duties from the base for determining the just share of the LGUs.

The high tribunal said it contravened the express constitutional edict in Section 6, Article X (1) of the 1987 Constitution.

Just look how a fourth class town Basista, Pangasinan 2022 proposed annual budget ballooned to P167, 673, 690.

Mayor JR Resuello told Northern Watch Newspaper that his municipality’s internal revenue allotments in years 2021 and 2022 are P109,558,591.00 and P156,673,690.00, respectively.

The table below shows how the Resuelo Administration sourced out his funds from the national and the local taxes to serve his minuscule 37, 679 populated town (PSA 2020):

Aguilar Mayor Sagles disclosed to this writer that its proposed year 2022 budget is P229, 812, 015 - an additional of almost P70 million from this year’s budget of P160, 178, 604.

“Our internal revenue allotment in 2021 is P160, 178,604.00 while it will increase to P222, 098,015.00 next year. Our local taxes in 2021 is P6, 917,000.00 our estimated local taxes in 2022 will be P7, 714, 000.00,” he said.

Meanwhile, unlike other towns that buttressed their business taxes at the expense of the financial standing of their constituents, Bataoil said he empathized with the people of Lingayen as they reel on the ravaged being done by the pandemic’s Corona Virus Disease-19.

“The people’s willingness to pay iyan ang importante sa akin. Pero sa ngayon kung baga the people’s trust and confidence to the local government”.

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