Gov’t scrambles to find more funds in fight vs pandemic

There’s cash but the budget is running low.

The government has already spent P352.7 billion for its coronavirus response, representing nearly a tenth of the P4.1-trillion national budget for 2020, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said.

“We have sufficient cash so far, but our budget allowance is stuck,” the Department of Finance chief said in a taped television address aired on Friday.

“That’s our problem now. We may have cash but we don’t have the authority to spend as much,” Dominguez added.

He was referring to the fact that budget managers would need to work within the bounds of the General Appropriations Act of 2020 and the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act, which gave President Rodrigo Duterte special powers to realign items in the 2019 and 2020 budget and divert them to the COVID-19 effort.

For the poorest So far, Dominguez said the government already released P352.7 billion for COVID-19 that was financed through tax collections, savings and loans from multilateral agencies.

“We’re making sure our expenditures is, No. 1, for the benefit of the poorest in our country, and we are reserving the balance for our ‘Build, Build, Build’ projects, so that when COVID is over, we will have funds to invest in infrastructures,” he said.

Mr. Duterte chimed in: “Actually, what Sonny [Dominguez] is telling us is that there’s money for now. Because, you know, there was no COVID when we crafted the budget last year to be implemented now.”

He said it reached the point where he had to select which projects in the regular program to discontinue and divert to the COVID-19 effort.

In March, Congress passed a law allowing the President to discontinue projects and realign items in the 2019 and 2020 budget for COVID-19, freeing up at least P275 billion worth of funding, including some P200 billion in emergency cash aid for poor families over a two-month period.

More funding needed In a separate briefing on Friday, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said one option available to the executive was to request a supplemental budget from Congress to free up more funding for COVID-19.

The official said he was confident Congress would cooperate, considering pronouncements by Senate President Vicente Sotto III and Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano that they intended to resume session as scheduled on May 4.

Budget Secretary Wendel Avisado agreed that if a second wave of COVID-19 infections would occur, more funding will be needed, possibly in the form of a supplemental budget for 2020.