House commits swift passage of proposed P5.3-T 2023 budget

Dalipe said the House leadership led by Speaker Martin Romualdez is committed to passing the spending measure before the end of October and signed by Marcos before year-end. (File Photo: House of Representatives of the Philippines/Facebook)

MANILA – Leaders of the House of Representatives on Monday said the chamber is committed to buckle down to work and ensure the swift passage of the proposed PHP5.268 trillion national budget for 2023 that is responsive to the needs of the people.

Following the formal turnover of Malacañang’s proposed National Expenditure Program to Congress, House Majority Leader Manuel Jose Dalipe said the House Committee on Appropriations and the Committee on Rules have agreed to work out a system to ensure that the proposed budget is passed on time and ensure the budget process will not be “snagged by unnecessary delays”.

Dalipe, as the chair of the Committee on Rules, has organized three teams composed of deputy majority leaders and assistant majority leaders to ensure the smooth and seamless flow of discussion once the budget is brought to the plenary.

“We have already coordinated with our teams in the committee on rules. We have prepared three teams (composed of Deputy Majority Leaders and Assistant Majority Leaders) and we are ready for the plenary deliberations on the budget. We are also closely coordinating with the committee on appropriations in order to facilitate our members who would want to fully discuss the budget,” Dalipe said in a media briefing.

Dalipe said the House leadership led by Speaker Martin Romualdez is committed to passing the spending measure before the end of October and signed by Marcos before year-end.

“We only have one thing to do and that is to pass this budget, the General Appropriations Bill. If there is any law that is required for us to act on and that is the General Appropriations Bill. We have prepared for this, we have arranged the teams and we will not be remiss in our job to properly scrutinize the budget,” he said.

Deputy Speaker Isidro Ungab assured that Congress, having the power of the purse, would be “diligently” scrutinizing the submitted budget and pass one that will be responsive and dynamic.

“The FY 2023 National Budget is the financial interpretation of the government’s plans and programs for 2023. It covers the President’s vision for our nation, which can be realized with the appropriate and sufficient funding for such government’s plans and programs,” Ungab said.

Ungab noted that the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC), composed of the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), Department of Budget and Management (DBM), Department of Finance (DOF), Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and Office of The President, has fully considered the realities besetting the present economic conditions in the submitted 2023 proposed national budget, tagged as Agenda for Prosperity: Economic Transformation Towards Inclusivity and Sustainability.

House ways and means chair Joey Salceda, meanwhile, vowed to push for special provisions and unprogrammed appropriations to expand food production and reduce inflation to give President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. flexibility “when we earn more revenues next year.”

“I plan to introduce amendments to the budget to expand food production and reduce prices through higher productive capacity,” Salceda said.

He particularly noted that the provisions he would introduce are unprogrammed appropriations for climate resilience in crops, support for farmers and fisherfolk affected by rising input costs, provisions for government-to-government procurement of food and other agricultural inputs, and provisions for value-chain enhancements.

He would also propose provisions allowing the Department of Trade and Industry to support small businesses through capacity building, unprogrammed appropriations to support more farm-to-market roads, and other administration priorities such as tourism roads.

Salceda also described the proposed budget as the country’s “Inflation Reduction Act, since this appears to be the most potent opportunity to insert inflation-busting mechanisms.”

“After all, the budget should reflect our national priorities, and inflation reduction is currently the biggest, most important one,” he added.

Deputy Speaker Ralph Recto, for his part, said the government agencies should improve their budget execution, stressing that “the budget is supposed to be spent for the right purpose, at the right time, by the right agency, for the right price.”

He cited that reports made by the Commission on Audit regarding procurement “fiascos” and huge unobligated amounts highlight the failure to obligate funds promptly and properly.

“That failure betrays the public because the tax-budget dynamic is that taxes paid by the people without disputing must be spent for projects that would benefit them without delay. That is the social contract that underpins the budget,” he said.

He said the issue should be addressed through a budget provision that will prohibit agencies from “parking” their funds in the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM) and the Philippine International Trade Corp. (PITC) to skirt procurement laws.

“The elephant in the room that must be addressed in this particular. If the thrust of this budget is recovery from the pandemic, then how fast our recovery is will depend to a large extent on how fast we spend the budget. There should be no repeat of last year’s budget utilization rate, when PHP784.8 billion remained undisbursed by end of the year, on top of PHP88.8 billion in unreleased appropriations,” Recto said.