DICT to require higher budget in coming years
While the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) is now under scrutiny for failing to scale up its spending, the agency's chief, Rodolfo Salalima, said they may even require more budget in the next years to come in order to fulfill its mandate to improve the country's telecommunications' sector.
More than a year since the establishment of DICT, the Congress is now questioning the capability of DICT to utilize its funds and is now assessing whether the agency deserves to obtain its requested budget of almost R7 billion next year.
For 2018, the new appropriations for DICT and its attached bureaus will specifically amount to R6.87 billion, a surge from its 2017 budget of R2.99 billion.
As to the question whether the DICT must have its proposed budget next year, Salalima believes these numbers are still actually quite small.
"Last year, we are only at the stage of conceptualizing. The amount we will use for certain projects are still not definite, we didn't know yet where to spend the money for. Like for example, in our broadband (plan), if we start from zero, meaning there is no existing government facilities (that we can use), the minimum (budget) should be R70 billion. But we are only asking for R6 billion next year," Salalima said in an interview with reporters.
"So our budget will really increase moving forward. (For) cybersecurity facilities alone, this would also entail billions. But we decided to ask small amounts for now because though we need more, we still don't have absorptive capacity. But to our mind, we can implement it. We can fully utilize the R6 billion for next year," he added.
According to him, the agency's budget will be used for countryside development and improve telecommunications services in the country.
"You have to make structures. Cyberattacks are on the upswing. (Congress) was the one that enacted our mandate. I don't know why they won't give us the budget that we will need to comply with our mandate," Salima further said.