House panel Oks P4.5 trillion = budget for 2021

MANILA, Philippines — The House appropriations committee has approved the proposed P4.5-trillion national budget for next year at a record speed of just two weeks of hearings.

Panel vice chairman and Bulacan Rep. Jonathan Sy-Alvarado confirmed yesterday that the General Appropriations Bill is set for deliberations at the plenary next week.

He said their panel decided to adopt the budget bill, which reflects the National Expenditure Program (NEP) submitted by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), despite plans to adjust several items such as increasing appropriations for the Department of Health (DOH) and the judiciary.

“The adjustments will just be made during plenary deliberations so we can just have one round of adjustments instead of two, and so we can save time,” Sy-Alvarado told The STAR.

The panel decided to conclude its hearings without finishing deliberations on the proposed budget of the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) after its scheduled hearings were suspended due to a barrage of complaints from the Makabayan bloc.

During its turn to defend its proposed P1.59-billion budget, the PCOO faced opposition from six militant lawmakers who confronted Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy for red-tagging them in her past social media posts.

They demanded the resignation of the PCOO official, who is also the spokesperson for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).

Unwilling to recant her accusation that they are “high-ranking communist-terrorists,” Badoy said she would only resign if they condemn the atrocities of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (NPA) and call for the surrender of exiled CPP founder Jose Maria Sison.

Among all agencies, it was only the PCOO whose budget was not completely deliberated on by the committee due to the Makabayan bloc’s objections.

“We will no longer hear the budget of PCOO again since we already had a short briefing on it. We will just bring the objections to the plenary directly since there are only a few of them,” Sy-Alvarado said.

“It’s allowed in the rules. We will just bring this matter to the plenary so it will be tackled once. Anyway, it’s the same group that will raise the objections again in the plenary,” he added.

Fastest budget approval?

The House leadership has set a speedy budget calendar this year, targeting to pass the proposed budget by the end of this month.

This timeframe would give the Senate the entire month of October to deliberate on and pass the budget; and the President to sign the 2021 General Appropriations Act (GAA) by mid- or late-November for the first time in history.

Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano admitted that having the budget signed in November is “very ambitious,” with the legislative calendar devoted to measures responding to the coronavirus pandemic, but gave assurance the chamber is up to the challenge.

“While we’re implementing Bayanihan 2 this September, October, November, December, we will try to finish the budget before the end of September – a very ambitious schedule. Then we will send it right away to the Senate,” he said.

Traditionally, the GAA is signed by the President in late December in time for its implementation at the start of the following year.

Last year, the Cayetano-led House was able to pass the budget at a record time of just one month of committee hearings and plenary deliberations.

However, the enactment of the budget for 2019 was delayed due to an impasse over infrastructure programs, prompting a reenactment of the previous budget that resulted in economic losses.

Infra gets 25% of budget

For 2021, infrastructure projects will remain a top priority of the Duterte administration, taking about 25 percent of the proposed P4.5-trillion national budget.

In the NEP, P1.1 trillion is allotted for the flagship “Build, Build, Build” program of the President, which is about one-fourth of the record-high national budget.

The proposed budget for infrastructure programs on the final full year of the administration showed an increase of P111 billion from this year’s P989 billion.

For agencies implementing the “Build, Build, Build” program, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) will get P667.3 billion – the second biggest allocation for a department – for network development, flood management and asset preservation programs; while the Department of Transportation (DOTr) will get P143.6 billion for rail transport, land public transportation and maritime infrastructure.

The budget of the DPWH and DOTr increased by P133 billion and P59.4 billion, respectively.

Infrastructure programs of the government have taken a backseat this year due to the pandemic.

The DOTr and DPWH saw their funding reduced this year after money was redirected to the COVID-19 containment effort, with the government having spent P355 billion as of early June.

The DPWH had P123 billion taken away, bringing its budget for the year to P457.95 billion, while the DOTr’s funding was trimmed by P8.82 billion to P90.58 billion.

Overall, budgeted infrastructure spending for 2020 fell to P833 billion from the initial funding level of P989 billion for this year.

^{Speakership issues}

Meanwhile, Cayetano urged his colleagues in the House to set aside the issues surrounding the speakership and focus instead on passing the budget.

In a Facebook Live post, the Speaker also thanked those who supported him following an alleged attempt to oust him.

“I am eternally grateful to every member of Congress for your continued trust and support in the leadership of this House of the People. And now I would ask that we translate this overwhelming show of unity into action by swiftly passing a great budget that we can all be proud of,” the Taguig-Pateros congressman said.

Majority Leader and Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez, who appeared with Cayetano in the live video, said he is optimistic that the House leadership can achieve its goal of prioritizing the needs of the people.

Cayetano vowed that Congress will attend to the needs of every district and sector but added that no amount of “blackmailing” or “hostage-taking” would force them to allow “pork, parking or corruption.”

His address comes after leaders of major political parties and regional blocs in the chamber pushed for a cancellation of his term-sharing agreement with Marinduque Rep. Lord Allan Velasco in order for him to retain the speakership.

Many of them voiced out the impracticality of changing leaders in the middle of the pandemic, especially since the House has been very productive under the incumbent.

But Velasco already said he intends to pursue the gentleman’s agreement brokered by President Duterte, which installs him as speaker after Cayetano assumes the post for the first 15 months of the 18th Congress.

His father, Marinduque Gov. Presbitero Velasco Jr., expressed support for his son and called on lawmakers to honor the gentleman’s agreement.

“There’s already an agreement. Why muddle up the situation now?” the retired Supreme Court justice said in a radio interview.