Proposed 2013 budget carries innovative bonus system — DBM’s Abad

The proposed P2.006-trillion budget of the Aquino administration will include an innovative performance-based bonus program, Budget and Management Secretary Florencio Abad said Tuesday.   "One innovation that we are going to introduce next year is a system of performance-based bonuses, which can range from five to 35,000 pesos per employee, on top of the Productivity Enhancement Incentive of about 5,000 that they will be receiving," he said at a press briefing in Malacañang.   The Productivity Enhancement incentive is not a performance-based bonus, the Budget chief noted. "It's really a bonus that's given at the end of the year, similar to a Christmas bonus," he said.   Details of how the performance-based bonus program works will follow soon, said Abad, who did not specify a date. However, he gave a rough flow of how the system will work.   "The first cut is to evaluate (the bureaus). We will look at the bureaus that performed best, better, good, and poor," said Abad.   If an agency does not reach its required work output, it will not be included in the bonus system, he said.   The second cut will evaluate the employees within the bureau.   "For example, from the best bureau, we will look at the employees who perform best, better, good, then correspondingly provide the incentive according to how they perform," said Abad.   The performance-based bonus system was proposed because one of the administration's budget goals is to strengthen the accountability of government agencies as public servants to Filipinos, and to give them more incentive to perform their mandates, according to the Budget chief.   The Aquino administration has labeled the 2013 budget as the Empowerment Budget.    "We call this an Empowerment Budget because it widens and deepens stakeholder participation," said Abad.   The Aquino administration has allotted the largest part of its proposed budget to social services, pegging it at P698.4 billion, or 34.8 percent of the budget. This is supposed to reduce poverty incidence to 16.6 percent by 2016.   Another chunk of the budget – pegged at P407 billion – will go to infrastructure.   Abad said the administration hopes to pass the proposed budget by Christmas, and expressed a wish for congressional support. “We hope the same concern and support will be displayed by Congress once again," he added. — VS, GMA News