FILE PHOTO: Speaker Ferdinand Martin G. Romualdez
Speaker Martin Romualdez on Thursday vowed to ensure that every centavo of the proposed P5.768-trillion 2024 national budget would be spent wisely on government services that would benefit all Filipinos.
He said that the House of Representatives would make sure that the 2024 general appropriations bill is approved on third and final reading in the lower chamber in five weeks—four weeks with the committee on appropriations and a week at the plenary.
“The budget deliberations [are] a meticulous exercise that requires accuracy, objectivity, and most of all, transparency,” Romualdez said. “As we hold the power of the purse, it is our duty to completely scrutinize the proposed 2024 national budget and deliver results that would sustain the gains of the past year and support the government’s priorities and policy directions as identified under the eight-point socioeconomic agenda and the Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028.”
House deliberations on the draft budget for next year kicked off on Thursday with fiscal managers, making up the Development Budget and Coordination Committee, briefing legislators on how the 2024 National Expenditure Program was crafted.