House approves 2009 budget

MANILA, Philippines – The House of Representatives approved on third and final reading last night the proposed P1.415-trillion 2009 national budget.

The lower chamber will now print a clean copy of the budget before sending it to the Senate, which has only about a month to pass its own version of the measure.

Speaker Prospero Nograles said he hopes the two chambers of Congress can approve the final version of the budget before the end of the year.

The House kept President Arroyo’s budget proposal intact. Her allies rejected proposals from opposition congressmen to cut it.

Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya Jr. told congressmen during the budget hearings that next year’s outlay was “shaped by food and fuel prices, as it erects ramparts to protect the people while at the same time building up their capabilities for growth and prosperity.”

“We are pumping up spending for agriculture because we cannot forever rely on foreign granaries to feed our people,” he said.

Thus, the Department of Agriculture and the agriculture and fisheries modernization program will get a budget increase of more than P14 billion, from P25.4 billion this year to P39.7 billion in 2007, he said.

The Department of Public Works and Highways will get a 17.2 percent increase, from P102.4 billion to P120 billion; while the Department of Education’s budget will go up by P20 billion to P168 billion.

“The Department of Health will be given a shot in the arm, its budget ramped up to P27.8 billion next year, or an increase of 37 percent. But of all the agencies, it is the Department of Social Welfare and Development that will receive the biggest funding hike of 117 percent, from this year’s level of P4.8 billion to P10.5 billion next year,” Andaya said.

This will give DWSD “more resources to provide welfare armor in the form of conditional cash transfers and subsidies to families at risk from food and fuel price spirals,” he said.

The other agencies with huge allocations include the Department of Interior and Local Government, P61.9 billion; Department of National Defense, P61.5 billion; Department of Transportation and Communications, P23.6 billion; Department of Agrarian Reform, P16.1 billion; Department of Finance, P13.8 billion; and the judiciary, P12.8 billion.