Duterte's last budget finally reaches Congress
MANILA, Philippines — The Duterte administration’s final full-year budget has entered the legislative mill.
The Department of Budget and Management on Monday submitted to Congress the record P5.024-trillion outlay for 2022, which is equivalent to 22.8% of gross domestic product and is higher by 11.5% than this year’s national budget.
The submission kicked off legislative discussions and scrutiny on the proposed outlay that would keep the government, but more importantly President Rodrigo Duterte’s successor, funded amid a costly and long battle against the coronavirus pandemic.
As it is, Monday’s submission still complies with the Constitution’s mandate requiring the DBM to send the budget proposal to Congress 30 days after the president’s State of the Nation Address. But it was already a departure from the DBM’s past practice of sending the proposed outlay on the day of the SONA or a few days after that to give lawmakers more time to deliberate on the budget bill.
“It is the last full-year financial program crafted by my Administration — a crucial document because it is key to our success in the battle against COVID-19 in the coming year,” Duterte told lawmakers in his budget message.
Another pandemic budget
The social services sector will receive the biggest chunk of the budget with P1.9 trillion, 15.2% higher than the current outlay. Of that amount, P252.4 billion will go to the health sector.
Broken down, P45.4 billion will be used to purchase booster shots for 93.798 million fully-vaccinated Filipinos. Funds for this program will come from “unprogrammed appropriations”, meaning the budget for this purpose would only be activated when there are excess revenues.
The government also appropriated P17.0 billion to hire more health service professionals. At the same time, P819 million has been earmarked for the procurement of personal protective equipment for medical front-liners, while P5.1 million has been appropriated to buy 11 million GeneXpert cartridges used for COVID-19 testing.
The proposed budget also included investments in medical research and development. Under this segment, P983 million has been allotted for the establishment of the Virology Science and Technology Institute of the Philippines and P140.0 million for the conduct of biosurveillance and immune-biosurveillance of COVID-19 variants under the Philippine Genomic Information and Resource Hub.
The Philippine Health Insurance Corp., the state health insurer, would receive P80 billion if the proposed budget for next year would be approved in its current form.
While the virus is being addressed, the Duterte administration hopes to continue economic recovery efforts to achieve their 7-9% GDP growth target for next year. About 29.3% of the proposed 2022 outlay, or P1.47 trillion, will go to economic services sector. Of that amount, P1.18 trillion will go to the Duterte administration’s flagship “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure program.
- Latest
- Trending
