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Infographic: PDAF is only one percent of the Budget ng Bayan


Editor's note: For a more comprehensive understanding of PDAF within the context of the national budget, we found this visualization by Filipina scientist EF Legara. We hope that this infographic helps in situating the size and relation of PDAF to the rest of the budget. This post originally appeared in her blog. We are re-posting it here with her permission.  
EF Legara

With all the talk about the pork barrel, I got more and more curious about the Budget ng Bayan in general. I realized that I didn’t know much about it.
 
For example, how is it distributed across sectors? Across regions? How about expense categories? What percentage of the entire budget is allocated to the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), among others?
 
Using the 2013 “proposed” budget data from the DBM website, one of the things I learned was that the PDAF is only one percent (1%) of the total Budget ng Bayan.
 
Now, in relation to the exposé of the misuse of the PDAF, this finding does not in any way mean that since it is “only” 1% that we should already turn a blind eye. Whether it is 0.1%, 1%, or 10%, if it can be proven that the money of the people has been misused, the guilty should be sanctioned.

In fact, what scares me more is the idea that if our legislators have used the PDAF fraudulently, what would have kept them from doing the same with the rest of the 99%? Clearly, there is much else that the public should also keep their eyes on.

 
In the budget constellation, PDAF is relatively puny. There is much else that the public should also keep their eyes on.  Yhere








Here, the budget allocations are classified into two categories: 1) by Department (dark-sea-green bars and bubbles) and 2) Special Purpose Fund (orange-red bars and bubbles).
 
Again, the visualization depicted here is from the 2013  “proposed” national budget dataset, which may still deviate from the 2013 approved one. -- KDM/HS, GMA News 
 

EF Legara is a Filipina physicist and data scientist working on Complex Systems. 


Author's note: I only used the 2013 “proposed” National Budget because that’s the first dataset I stumbled on. This is only for my self-study. Feel free to verify the trends and give me a shout-out in the comments section if and when you find significant errors and/or inconsistencies.

 


 

 

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