Senate to approve today proposed P3-T national budget

MANILA, Philippines - After four days of marathon hearings, the Senate is set to approve on third and final reading today the proposed P3.002-trillion national budget for 2016.

Senate President Franklin Drilon said yesterday they were able to complete deliberations on the budgets of all government agencies after “working day and night” for the past three days.

“We expect to approve this on second and third reading tomorrow and then this will be taken up in the bicameral conference committee immediately after,” Drilon said.

“Maybe by Dec. 4 both houses will be done with the budget,” he said.

Sen. Loren Legarda, chairperson of the Senate committee on finance, said that the bicameral conference committee meetings can be held as early as Friday if the panel’s counterpart in the House of Representatives is ready.

The bicameral conference committee is composed of representatives from the House of Representatives and the Senate. Their task is to reconcile the conflicting provisions in their respective versions of bills they approved.

The reconciled version would be presented to the respective chambers for their concurrence.

The next step would be the printing of copies of the measure, one of which would be sent to the President for his review and signing.

Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, who was present at the Senate yesterday, told reporters that the early approval of the national budget would be “good for the economy, as well as for the execution of the budget.”

Abad noted that this would be the sixth straight year that the national budget was submitted to Congress early and approved before the end of the year.

“We explained the budget quite clearly to the legislators because it was really a very disaggregated budget, unlike before that there were lump sums that were the cause for many inquiries,” Abad said.

“Now it’s pretty much disaggregated so everything you need to know about the budget is there, plus the fact that we submitted the people’s budget that explains it in popular terms,” he said.

“So we hope that this is done tomorrow so that the SSL (Salary Standardization Law) 2015 can also be passed before the year ends,” he added.

Abad also allayed concerns that the 2016 national budget could be used for election purposes, specifically to boost the chances of the Liberal Party’s standard bearer Manuel Roxas II.                  

He explained that the “disaggregation” of the national budget would leave no room for using the funds for purposes other than what was intended.

“This budget was not designed for elections. The election ban starts March 25 so a greater part of this budget may not be executed in the first three months because of the March 25 ban,” he said.

“But for the emergency projects like the Yolanda rehabilitation, they’re not covered by the ban or PPP projects which are really strategic infrastructure projects that are not covered,” he added.

“So there’s really no room for using it for election purposes because it has been presented in detail so there is no flexibility or discretion involved in the budget,” he added.  – With Christina Mendez