MANILA, Philippines — The Aquino administration expects to save billions of pesos by implementing new budgetary measures, including the bulk purchases of its supplies, airline, and hotel fees and other utilities.

At the same time, the administration plans to combat corruption through the use of procurement cards instead of cash in government agencies and a central payroll system for state workers.

These measures were discussed and endorsed by President Aquino during the mid-year budget performance review in Malacañang last Monday, according to Budget Secretary Florencio Abad Jr.

“One of the directives was to look into bulk purchases of airline fares, hotel accommodations, telephone subscriptions, and Internet connections,” Abad said Tuesday in an interview in Malacañang, citing the huge expenses incurred by the government in the past years.

By entering in wholesale purchases in supplies and utilities, Abad said the government could bring down its expenses by several billions which could be channeled to more social services.

He said Transportation Secretary Mar Roxas will talk with airline companies on the possible bulk purchase of airline tickets for traveling government officials and employees while Trade Secretary Gregory Domingo will look into the bulk telephone and Internet subscription for employees.

“There are 1.13 million government employees, and all of them I would imagine have cellular phones. Just assuming that officially about half of them use government phones, then we can sit down with the telcos what best rates they can offer us, if we offer them bulk subscription for three to five years, that’s big savings,” he said.

Abad also said the budget department will implement the use of procurement cards instead of cash for all expenditures, initially with the Armed Forces of the Philippines later this year.

The budget chief said it was difficult to trace public funds spent in the military in the past since 46 percent of the expenditures were made through cash advances. “But with the procurement card, there is instant liquidation,” he added.

He said the procurement card is similar to a debit card given to an accounting officer who will have limitations on how much he can spend and what for.

All government agencies are also required to procure all their common supplies and equipment from the Procurement Service to save around P6 billion, according to Abad. “In the procurement service, you save on the average 35 percent. If you buy from our procurement service, it will be faster since agencies will not need to go through bidding,” he said.

At present, the total expenditure of the government on common use supplies such as bond paper, pencils, ballpens, and inks is around P19.5 billion. “So if all of that P19.5 billion buy from the Procurement Service, we multiply that by 35 percent, and that’s about a little less than P6 billion,” Abad said.

Starting next year, Abad also disclosed that salaries of state workers will be deposited in their bank accounts by the National Treasury under the central payroll system. He said the new payroll scheme will cut a lot of paperwork, and even corruption.

“Salaries of government will no longer go through the agencies but the treasury will deposit the salaries to the bank accounts of the employees,” he said. “Withholding taxes will then be directly remitted by the treasury to the BIR and the premiums to the GSIS,” he added.

Other measures being considered are energy efficiency measures as well as open-source technology for computer software in government offices.

“Just for licenses for software that we are using, we pay about P8 billion in three years, but if you adopt open source technology, then we don’t have to pay anything, so that P8 billion in three years we save, that’s just for software subscriptions,” he said.

Meantime, the President has encouraged the public to take part in the formulation of the proposed national budget for 2012 in line with his thrust on transparency.

Abad said concerned individuals and organizations can participate in formulating the budget for the six large government agencies and three large government-owned and controlled corporations by checking their official websites.

He noted that government agencies were earlier directed to open their books to the public through the posting of all transactions such as allotments, biddings, obligations and disbursements on their respective websites.