A DEPARTMENT of Budget and Management (DBM) booklet seeks to inform and educate the public in lay-friendly terms the intricacies of the proposed 2016 General Appropriations Act (GAA) in the interest of public transparency.
The proposed 2016 GAA is P3.002 trillion.
The 2016 People’s Proposed Budget (PPB), as the booklet is titled, aims at comprehensibility and clarity, said BS Fine Arts in Advertising Arts alumna Adrienne Ponce.
Ponce, a freelance, graphic designer tapped by DBM to design the booklet, said she and her design team sought to make the public action visually appealing and inviting.
“Since this was going to be a booklet filled with a lot of charts and numbers, we needed to present everything in an attractive and engaging way, otherwise the readers might become bored with plain presentations of the text,” Ponce said.
The 52-page booklet’s art and design team included Dan Matutina, a designer and illustrator of local and international magazines, and DBM information designer Emmie Albangco as the layout supporter.
The booklet features graphic illustrations of infrastructures, houses and landscapes accenting the bold face and blue “2016” center text on its cover. The PPB title is emphasized by a background of washed-out graphics of mountains and lakes in the rural setting and buildings and roads presented in the urban setting, depicted in varying palettes of yellow. P
Color schemes of the infographics, charts and tables representing the booklet’s content circulate around different palettes of primary colors.
The booklet also features graphics of the budget dimensions analyzed through divisions by sector, by expense class, by region, by top 10 executive departments, by department and special purpose funds.
The booklet acquaints the reader on the priority programs of the proposed 2016 budget, such as social protection, managing disaster risks and basic education.
Social protection, for example, consists of the anti-poverty Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, which the book shows has been raised to P59.38 billion from this year’s P57.4 billion. The Department of Public Works and Highways meanwhile has been proposed to receive an increased fund for flood control and drainage—P59.84 billion.
A budget cycle, shown at the concluding part of the booklet, gives the public a view of the four-step process of preparation to accountability. Amierielle Anne A. Bulan
