Senate on track with budget debates – Poe

By Kenneth Christiane L. Basilio, Reporter

THE SENATE Committee on Finance is on track with its deliberations of the proposed P6.352-trillion national budget for 2025, in time for its plenary sponsorship in November, its chairman said on Thursday.

The House of Representatives is set to submit its approved version of the spending plan on Oct. 18, Senator Mary Grace Poe-Llamanzares, who heads the Senate finance panel, said.

“Based on the schedule agreed with the House, the transmittal of the General Appropriations Bill (GAB) is on Oct. 27,” she told reporters in a Viber message.

“The hearings in the Senate will continue until Oct. 18. Only after that and the transmittal of the GAB can we start drafting the committee report in the Senate,” she added.

She said the Senate is “ahead of schedule with hearings,” citing she is ready to sponsor the budget bill in the plenary in November.

The House approved its version of the GAB on final reading on Wednesday, ahead of its month-long break and just 58 days after receiving the spending plan from the executive branch.

With 285 affirmative and three negative votes, lawmakers passed House Bill No. 10800 on second and third reading. President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. on Tuesday certified the measure as urgent, allowing the chamber to do away with the mandated three-day interval between bill approvals.

“We did our job in scrutinizing the 2025 national budget. We finished it on time,” House Speaker and Leyte Rep. Ferdinand Martin G. Romualdez told the plenary before adjournment.

“With the eventual approval of the nation’s 2025 budget not far behind, the National Government is more than ready to finance and implement its future initiatives and flagship projects,” he added.

The proposed budget is equivalent to 22.1% of the gross domestic product and 10.1% than the P5.768-trillion budget this year.

The plenary adopted the amendments contained in the House appropriation panel’s committee report, which recommended a P1.3-billion cut to the Office of the Vice President’s (OVP) budget, bringing the office’s total allocations down to P733 million.

The slashed budget will be equally reallocated to the Social Welfare and Health departments at P646 million each, earmarked to agencies’ financial and medical aid programs for indigent Filipinos.

“Some of the funds originally requested by the OVP will be allocated to more appropriate agencies such as the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and the Department of Health (DOH),” Mr. Romualdez said in a statement in mixed English and Filipino. “This will rationalize the budget of the OVP.”

Congressmen also created a “small committee” to resolve individual amendments to the budget bill. It will accept proposed changes from lawmakers until Sept. 27, Friday.

Its members include House appropriations committee chairman and Party-list Rep. Elizaldy S. Co, House appropriations senior vice chairperson and Marikina Rep. Stella Luz A. Quimbo, Majority Leader and Zamboanga Rep. and Majority Leader Manuel Jose M. Dalipe, and Minority Leader and Party-list Rep. Marcelino C. Libanan.

Lawmakers during the budget bill’s deliberation signaled their intention to increase funding to the agriculture, education, infrastructure sectors.

In his turno en contra speech, Mr. Libanan said the proposed 2025 budget “presents conflicting priorities” despite it being formulated with the Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028 in mind.

Under the 2025 National Expenditure Program, the Budget department slashed the proposed budgets for agriculture, health, and social welfare sectors by 4.7%, 7.6%, and 3.4%, respectively.

“How can we justify deprioritizing sectors that are essential to the economic and social well-being of millions of Filipinos,” he said.

“Education and health have experienced many budget cuts,” Deputy Minority Leader and Party-list Rep. France L. Castro said in her turno en contra speech in Filipino. “If we look at the DepEd budget proposal, the budget for teacher training and education support personnel has been reduced.”

“Even the funding to address the classroom shortage has been reduced. It seems like the administration is not prioritizing the educational crisis our country is facing,” she added.

While DepEd’s proposed 2025 budget increased by 4.1% to P793.19 billion from P762.1 billion this year. Of the amount, only P2.78 billion was allotted to teacher development, declining by 32.1% from P4.1 billion.

Think-tank IBON Foundation Executive Director Jose Enrique “Sonny” A. Africa said the budget’s “supposed focus on promoting inclusiveness and prosperity” is a contradiction to the drafted budget given the cumulative P67-billion cut to the government’s indigent aid programs.

Congress should look at reallocating budgets “grandiose infrastructure projects” to agricultural support programs and social protection initiatives, he said in a Viber message before the House budget approval.

Lawmakers should’ve discussed the fiscal soundness of the proposed budget amid the insertion of hundreds of billions in the 2024 national budget’s unprogrammed appropriations, Filomeno S. Sta. Ana III, coordinator of Action for Economic Reforms, said in a Viber message before the budget approval.

Unprogrammed appropriations for 2024 ballooned by more-than-double to P731.45 billion from the proposed P281.91 billion as Congress shifted funding for infrastructure and social protection projects into it.