Senate plans to triple COVID-19 vaccine budget

MANILA, Philippines — The Senate plans to more than triple the proposed budget for purchasing coronavirus vaccines for next year, citing Malacañang’s proposal of P2.5 billion as inadequate, a senator revealed yesterday.

Sen. Sonny Angara, chairman of the Senate committee on finance, is set to sponsor on Wednesday a proposed budget of P8 billion for the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines.

This is an increase by P5.5 billion from the original P2.5 billion fund set by Malacañang in the proposed P4.5 trillion national budget for 2021.

Earlier, the House of Representatives increased the allocation for the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines to P8 billion.

“We also have a standby appropriation of maybe P10 billion that when there is already a widely available vaccine for many of our people, we can easily shift that,” Angara told dzBB radio.

The senator said the P10 billion was originally intended for additional capital infusion for the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

He also cited a commitment from Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez that government financial institutions are expected to declare “savings” to help fund the vaccine purchases.

Angara said the Senate is also going to augment the budget of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) by about P1.5 billion for COVID-19 testing.

Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon, however, expressed doubts on the government’s preparedness to undertake mass vaccinations because aside from funding woes, critical aspects such as logistics and human resource remain to be addressed in the proposed 2021 national budget.

Drilon said he supports the policy direction laid out by newly appointed vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr., who earlier said the government intends to purchase an initial batch of 24 million COVID-19 vaccines once they become available next year.

The 2021 budget Malacañang prepared “does not support that vision” as it only earmarked a measly P2.5 billion for vaccines procurement, he said.

“That is why we will be pushing for more budget for the procurement and administration of potential coronavirus vaccines. Congress has to appropriate money to buy the vaccine and the best time to do it is now while we are deliberating on the spending outlay,” Drilon said in a statement.

He reiterated his serious concern over the government’s lack of a coronavirus vaccine distribution plan to ensure immediate access to, and efficient and equitable transportation, storage and distribution of the vaccines.

He said the government should lay the groundwork for distribution as soon as possible, saying that the huge task does not start and end in buying the vaccine.

Meanwhile, Speaker Lord Allan Velasco expressed his support for the call of President Duterte to bring down the cost of COVID-19 tests, particularly the gold-standard reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) swab test.

“We really need to set a price that is affordable (for) most people, especially the poor, to encourage them to subject themselves to screening, whether they have symptoms or are asymptomatic,” Velasco said.

Earlier, Duterte issued an executive order mandating a price ceiling for COVID-19 test kits and testing services.

The Departments of Health (DOH) and of Trade and Industry (DTI) have been tasked by the Chief Executive to set the price cap, which will be known any time this week.– Delon Porcalla