Senator Binay to scrutinize Secretary Roxas’s budget

Nancy Binay. INQUIRER file photo

MANILA, Philippines—Senators Jinggoy Estrada and Nancy Binay intend to go over with a fine-toothed comb the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s 2014 budget, particularly the increased allocation for the DSWD’s cash doleout program.

Binay has also expressed a keen interest in scrutinizing the budget of the Department of the Interior and Local Government, which is headed by Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, the likely opponent of her father, Vice President Jejomar Binay, in the 2016 presidential elections.

They told reporters about their designs on the budget following a luncheon meeting at the Vice President’s Coconut Palace office that was also attended by the senators who are expected to make up the minority in the 16th Congress.

Binay said her father was present at the meeting. She said there was no “political color” in her interest in the DILG budget.

“I’m quite familiar with local government issues because for the longest time my father and my mother became mayors,” she said.

Estrada said he was interested in the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program which he implied was used to benefit administration candidates during the May elections. Norman Bordadora