Government planning sessions must focus on improving public service delivery rather than serving as justification for lavish expenditures or burning through unspent agency funds before the fiscal year closes, Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Acting Secretary Kim Robert C. De Leon warned.
Addressing the 58th Annual Conference of the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines (FINEX) on October 9, De Leon announced that the DBM will soon issue revised budget circulars to enforce stricter fiscal discipline and stop questionable year-end activities disguised as official business.
“Especially now that we are in the fourth quarter, so surely there will be a surge in utilization because there will be parties left and right masquerading to be planning sessions,” De Leon remarked, pointing out how hotel-based strategic planning workshops have expanded far beyond their original administrative intent.
“We have to admit, some of those started from a budget circular authorizing one to be conducted, and it just snowballed and everyone loves doing strategic planning in hotels like this,” he added.
While acknowledging that legitimate planning sessions remain essential for government operations, the Budget Chief emphasized that public expenditures must stay reasonable, efficient and directly beneficial to the public.
De Leon also challenged the traditional metric of measuring an agency’s performance solely by its budget utilization rate.
“Don’t just look at, ‘We spent 98 percent of budget.’ On what?” De Leon said, advocating for results-oriented budgeting. “We’re looking at quality of spending. You may be spending less but producing more in terms of output and even outcome.”
The upcoming DBM policy revisions aim to eliminate wasteful quarter-four spending sprees while safeguarding necessary funds for genuine planning, inter-agency coordination and frontline public service delivery.