Congress OKs P3-T budget

By: Gil C. Cabacungan - 9 years ago

The Congressional conference committee on Wednesday signed off on the P3.002 trillion budget for 2016, after restoring the P8 billion slashed by the Senate and doubling the budget of Vice President Jejomar Binay to P500 million.

The bicameral committee which approved House Bill No. 6132, or the 2016 General Appropriations Bill, was composed of Senators Loren Legarda, the Senate finance committee chair, Ralph Recto, Juan Ponce Enrile and Bam Aquino and their House counterparts, House committee on appropriations chair Isidro Ungab, Majority Leader Neptali Gonzales II and Marikina Rep. Miro Quimbo.

Ungab said he expected the budget to be ratified before the Dec. 19 holiday break and signed by President Aquino before the end of the year. He noted that this will be the sixth straight year that the budget would be approved on time under the Aquino administration.

Legarda will submit on Monday the approved bicameral report to the Senate which is expected to ratify the budget measure the same day.

“We are confident that the President will be able to sign the proposed 2016 national budget into law before Christmas. In a way, this is our gift to the people as we have introduced allocations and provisions that will benefit those who most need government support,” she said.

Slashed by P8 billion

Ungab reported that the budget for the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program was restored to its original level of P62.5 billion.

The CCT budget was slashed by P8 billion in the Senate version of the bill on the initiative of Legarda, Enrile and Sen. Vicente Sotto III. Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman earlier warned that reducing the CCT budget by P8 billion would deprive 15 million beneficiaries of at least two months’ worth of dole-outs and health and education grants.

Aside from the CCT, the bicameral committee also approved an increase in the budget of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) from P230.5 million in the original proposal to P500 million on the initiative of Enrile, a member of Binay’s United Nationalist Alliance.

“With respect to the OVP, I thought the second highest leader of the land deserves better than a minuscule budget, regardless whether he is from the opposition or administration,” Enrile said.

Not without drama

The bicameral meeting was not without drama as Enrile walked out of the meeting at the Batasan after the committee rejected the Senate’s proposal to increase the budget of the Department of National Defense by P10 billion to P126.6 billion. Enrile proposed that the additional funds be sourced partly from the contingency fund of the President and partly from the public works budget.

The committee retained the original proposal to increase the defense budget by P1 billion to P117.5 billion which Enrile called a “joke” before huffily out of the meeting.

Ungab cited four major changes made in the bicameral: an increase of P1.2 billion in the budget for indigent senior citizens; an increase in the budget of state universities and colleges (SUCs) by P2.7 billion to cover their capital outlays; the veterans’ pensions proposal totaling P4.7 billion was sustained, and the provision of P7 billion to fully fund the Salary Standardization Law of 2015 for its first tranche of implementation next year.

As expected, the Department of Education (DepEd) received the biggest budget allocation at P411.905 billion. The DepEd budget covers the implementation of the K-12 program, including the construction of classrooms and hiring of more teachers. SUCs also got P47 billion in next year’s budget.

Pension for veterans

According to a statement issued by Legarda, the national budget next year will have, for the first time, funding for the payment of total administrative disability pension for surviving spouses of deceased veterans of World War II. It also provided for the partial payment of the disability pension for living postwar veterans who are at least 80 years of age next year. With a report from Christine Avendaño