THERE is much reason to trumpet the success of the administration’s effort to increase starting last year the excise taxes on tobacco and alcohol. With the initiative, the government managed to collect an additional P51.2 billion in so-called sin taxes. This year, the additional collection is estimated at P44 billion.
But while this seems to total to a substantial amount -- over P95 billion in two years -- it remains minuscule relative to the government’s total budgetary needs. In 2015, the proposed national budget is about P2.6 trillion. The P44 billion to be collected this year is just 1.6% of the proposed budget.
The concern, of course, is that these are all estimates. And as experience shows us, not all estimates can be successfully and consistently achieved. If memory serves me well, revenue collection (taxes plus customs duties) has actually been below target for some time now. In short, below estimates with respect to meeting the government’s financing needs for this year.
There are outliers as well -- unexpected expenses that were not budgeted for the year but would have to be paid nonetheless. Some such expenses result from force majeure. Yolanda late last year is the perfect example. Rescue, relief, recovery and rehabilitation expenses were all unplanned but necessary.
In some cases, outliers result from poor planning. And sadly, while government planners and managers are to blame for such situations, the burden still falls on the people they are sworn to serve -- even if these people, who pay the government salaries, had absolutely nothing to do with the poor planning or formulating and implementing policies.
Take the case of the K+12 initiative, with the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) now asking Congress for at least P10 billion in subsidies to cover what was reported as projected “losses” arising from “transition pains” of the K+12 program. Kinder plus 12 years of basic education (Grades 1-12) is now the requirement for entry to higher education institutions.
By its own admission, CHEd was reported to have told Congress that it had not anticipated all forms of transition pains, which include lack of college enrollments when Grades 11 and 12 or senior high school takes effect in 2016. Also an impending issue is the displacement of college teachers with the transfer of several basic courses to senior high school.
CHEd should have fully anticipated all transition concerns. The K+12 program was not something that was imposed suddenly. In fact, the transition to K+12 took several years. But now we learn the initiative seems to suffer from insufficient planning. It thus puzzles me why the government insisted on it in 2012 even while the government was still to exhaustively study all transition issues.
As CHEd boss Patricia Licuanan herself admitted on the displacement of college teachers, “This is not something that is easy and we do not have easy answers. We are studying this very carefully. We have a technical working group and the ideas coming out are radical but doable.”
She added that recommendations have been made, but their feasibility was under review.
But why review only now? Any feasibility study should have been done a couple of years back. Recommendations should have been made and tested even before the K+12 initiative was approved and implemented, and not after. These recommendations should have formed part of the overall plan prior to implementing it.
As for the P10 billion, a CHEd official said this would be used to assist colleges as the government “subsidizes” the tuition differential to cover for the lack of college enrollment in 2016 once Grades 11 and 12 are implemented. Budget is also sought to assist displaced teachers after remedial courses such as English, Filipino and Math are removed from the college general education curriculum and transferred to senior high school. Other courses such as General Psychology and Basic Economics are also to be removed.
The K+12 program could have benefitted a lot from further study and simulation prior to implementation. But it seems the options for teachers to be displaced are being considered only now.
Moreover, why should the government -- that means taxpayers -- foot the subsidies for tuition differentials? Will these subsidies go to state colleges or privately owned schools as well? Private schools are for-profit businesses. Why should the national budget be used to “sustain” them when they temporarily suffer from lack of enrollment as a result of government policy? The policy shift is a regulatory risk, is it not?
In 2012, as he pushed for K+12, Education Secretary Armin Luistro also expressed support for the idea of “outsourcing” senior high school classes to colleges and universities. This is reportedly to bridge the expected gap in college freshmen enrollment in 2016 and 2017.
Secretary Luistro, a La Salle brother from Lipa, Batangas, who used to be president and chief executive officer of De La Salle Philippines (covering eight De La Salle institutions), even told a House budget hearing at the time that higher educational institutions (HEIs) had sought DepEd permission to temporarily offer Grades 11 and 12 in 2016 and 2017.
Back then, two years ago, I already said that Secretary Luistro was offering solutions for a problem that he himself had created by adamantly pushing for K+12 and thus temporarily creating a gap in freshmen enrollment in 2016 and 2017, with colleges and universities also seeing temporary overcapacity with respect to facilities and faculty. Retrenchment was not mentioned then.
What confused me then, as it still does now, is that this gap was created by DepEd itself as it pushed K+12 without first building up towards it. The initiative could have been better planned prior to implementation.
Implement now + plan later = bad governance.
(Send comments to matort@yahoo.com.)
source: Businessworld
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