No ‘usual growth’ in police, military 2022 funds amid pandemic – Angara

(FILE) Police officers stand in formation at Camp Crame in Quezon City during a mass oath-taking.

MANILA, Philippines — No “usual growth” in the budgets of the police and the military is expected for 2022 as the country seeks to firm up its health and economic response to the pandemic, Senator Sonny Angara said Friday.

“No. Just maybe steady,” Angara, chairman of the Senate finance committee said in an interview on ABS-CBN News Channel.

This, when asked if he sees the need to cut the proposed funding for the police and military in favor of allocating more budget to the health sector.

“Don’t expect the usual growth in the past years because we’re trying to stabilize our economy and we’re trying to firm up our health response should something akin to the Delta variant happen,” the senator added.

“We’ll just keep our spending on that because we also need peace and order, we also need national security and you know we had some planes crash, aircraft crashes this year. We need to replace those also,” he added.

The Senate has already started its plenary deliberations on the 2022 national budget.

The finance panel, Angara said, reprioritized and realigned some funds to increase the funding of the Department of Health, which was given P226.7 billion under the Senate committee’s version of the 2022 budget.

“We had to take some funds from here and there in the budget to come up with this additional budget for the DOH,” he added.

Angara’s committee also provided funding for the medical COVID-19 frontliners’ special risk allowance and compensation worth P51 billion.

/MUF