Clarita Carlos
National Security Adviser Clarita Carlos on Friday revealed that the budget of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac) in the 2023 General Appropriations Act (GAA) was only P6.3 billion. Carlos said P3.7 billion was slashed from its original P10-billion allocation. “It became 6.3 billion and we are still investigating why there was such a cut,” she said. Based on the website of the Department of Budget and Management, the 2023 national budget showed that the NTF-Elcac’s Barangay Development Program was given P6.336 billion. Last year, a P10-billion budget was proposed for the NTF-Elcac, a significant increase from the P5.6 billion it received in 2022. During the budget deliberations, lawmakers realigned P5 billion from the NTF-Elcac budget but it was later restored in the reconciled version of the 2023 national budget. It remained unclear why the budget of the NTF-Elcac was at P6.3 billion in the 2023 GAA. —Nestor Corrales