FILE PHOTO: Senator Sonny Angara. (Joseph Vidal/Senate PRIB)
MANILA, Philippines — Citing experience, Senator Sonny Angara said he is seeing increases in the budgets for education and health sectors in the final version of the proposed P5.768 trillion national budget for 2024.
As chairman of the Senate committee on finance, Angara vowed to work on increasing funding for these sectors following concerns raised over budget cuts in the 2024 National Expenditure Program (NEP).
NEP is the budget proposal submitted by Malacañang to Congress for approval.
In the health sector, Angara expects an increase in the budget of the Medical Assistance for Indigent Patients (MAIP), which only received P22.3 billion in the 2024 NEP – down from this year’s P32.6 billion.
The senator noted that in the 2023 NEP, MAIP was originally given a P22.39 billion budget, “but through the interventions of the members of Congress, the program ended up with the final amount of P32.6 billion.”
“The budget for MAIP has increased annually from P9.4 billion in 2019 to P10.5 billion in 2020, P17 billion in 2021, P21.4 billion in 2022, and P32.6 billion in 2023. We expect a similar increase in the program in the final version of the 2024 budget,” Angara said in a statement Friday.
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He also noted how funding for specialty hospitals operated by the Department of Health increased in the final version of the 2023 national budget compared to the proposal submitted by Malacañang.
Specialty hospitals such as the Lung Center of the Philippines, National Kidney and Transplant Institute, Philippine Children’s Medical Center, Philippine Heart Center, and Philippine Institute of Traditional and Alternative Health Care received almost P7 billion this year.
Angara said this was an increase of P2 billion from the P4.9 billion proposal of Malacañang and a P1.1 billion hike from the P5.8 billion they received in 2022.
In the case of education, the senator also expects an increase in the budgets of the state universities and colleges (SUCs,) including the University of the Philippines system.
“For three straight years, we have seen increases in the budgets of the SUCs. From P73.7 billion in 2020, this went up to P85.9 billion in 2021, P104.17 billion in 2022 and P107 billion in 2023. Similar to the health sector, we also expect increases in the budgets of the SUCs and UP once Congress is done deliberating on the 2024 NEP,” he said.
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Angara said he sees no reason for concern about the reduction in the proposed 2024 budget of the UP system in the NEP because “this will be rectified and increased by the time December comes, and we’ve been through the budgetary process.”
Next year’s budget for UP was reportedly cut by nearly P3 billion – from P25.516 billion this year to P22.587 billion in the 2024 NEP.
Meanwhile, expect budget cuts in some government departments and agencies as “non-recurring expenses” would be removed in the funding proposal for next year.
“This is primarily because of non-recurring expenses,” Angara pointed out.
“These include infrastructure projects that are already implemented in the current year so the amounts for these are removed for next year’s budget proposals,’ he explained.