Ombudsman's P5.34-B budget for 2024 submitted for Senate plenary approval

The Senate on Tuesday submitted for approval the Office of the Ombudsman’s P5.34 billion proposed budget for 2024 in less than two minutes.

That's after no senator sought to interpellate Senate finance committee chair Sonny Angara on the anti-graft body’s spending plan for next year.

Under the Senate's version of the 2024 budget, the confidential funds of the Office of the Ombudsman is at P1 million.

This after, Ombudsman Samuel Martires asked Angara in October to limit his confidential funds to P1 million until 2025 or end of his term.

This is significantly lower from the P51.469 million confidential funds that the anti-graft body originally proposed in the National Expenditures Program (NEP).

During the earlier budget deliberations both in the Senate and the House of Representatives, Martires said that he is amenable to the deletion of confidential funds lodged in his office if “it will only taint the reputation of the office and of the Ombudsman and its officers.”

Martires had said the deletion of such budget proposal won’t affect the functions of the anti-graft body.

"On the matter of confidential funds, I’d like to be the first from the investigating agencies to request Congress--that if it will, as I have been saying, it will only taint the reputation, the integrity of the office, as well as of the Ombudsman and its officers-- they'll not have confidential funds during my term of office… I think we can survive without the confidential funds,” Martires said during the previous budget deliberations.”

He added that the Office of the Ombudsman can still gather information through other means.

“I can always smile at my friends and probably treat them for over a cup of coffee. We can do that for us… Nakukuha lahat ito sa pangiti-ngiti sa kape, ‘di ba, sa mga PR, PR? Ganun lang naman ‘yan eh hindi naman kailangan gastusan lahat ng pera,” said Martires.

(We can accomplish it over coffee or good PR. We don't need to spend a lot of money.) —VAL, GMA Integrated News