Budget reform has always been the heart of TG Guingona’s advocacies. is the heart of Guingona’s legislative agenda. What he envisions is simple enough: The use of government funds must be transparent, accountable & participative — Filipinos should be able to have access to the information of how every peso of their taxes are being spent.
Therefore, he wants budgets to be posted on multiple public websites for everyone to access. However, it is more important that the public also be empowered to understand these data made available to them, thus it should be presented in terms understandable by an ordinary citizen. “When access combines with understanding, meaningful participation follows,” Guingona said.
Open Budget Partnership
This is all covered in the Open Budget Partnership that was convened by Senator Guingona last November 2010. This is a first-of-its-kind collaborative initiative among these stakeholders: the Executive through the Department of Budget and Management, Congress through the Senate Finance Committee and the House Committee on Appropriations, civil society groups, professional organizations in finance, accountancy and budgeting, academic institutions, and international development agencies to bring good governance to the government budget process.
“One of the greatest lies spread by corrupt public officials is that government budgets are far too complicated to be understood by ordinary citizens and should therefore be left to specialists alone,” said TG, and he proceeded on asking the public for suggestions on how we can make the budget a more understandable topic. He received great responses on Facebook and Twitter, as well as offline.
There has already been much improvements made on our budget process, many thanks to the good leadership at the Department of Budget and Management, including our very first non-reenacted budget in eleven years. However, there is still much work left to be done for budget reform, especially in making the task of government expenditure monitoring a public and participative task. Senator TG Guingona swears to be at the forefront of the crusade to make this an achievable goal.