House OKs 2016 budget

MANILA, Philippines - The House of Representatives ratified last night the conference committee report on the proposed P3.002-trillion 2016 national budget.

Ratification is the final act for approval of the budget bill. The Senate acted on the report on Monday.

Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. thanked his colleagues for the timely passage of the appropriations measure.

He said the House has consistently approved the budget before the end of the fiscal year since 2011.

Davao City Rep. Isidro Ungab, appropriations committee chairman, and his Senate counterpart, Loren Legarda, jointly chaired the conference committee that put together the final version of the proposed budget.

Ungab said the conferees restored the P8-billion cut in conditional cash transfer (CCT) program funds approved by the Senate.

He said the restoration was the combined initiative of the House contingent and Sen. Ralph Recto.

Recto said the P8-billion reduction would have deprived at least 500,000 poor families of cash assistance from the CCT program.

Ungab said the conferees also allocated an additional P2.7 billion for senior citizens, P4.7 billion for veterans’ pension and P7 billion to augment funds for the planned four-year salary increase of the 1.5 million government personnel starting next year.

He said the P30-billion risk management fund, which the Senate wanted deleted, was kept.

He said the fund is for “sovereign guarantees made by the previous administrations that entered into contracts with private companies.”

“The government has to honor those contracts,” he said.

Recto wanted the fund scrapped.

“There is P30 billion in such fund in the 2015 budget and another P30 billion for next year, for a total of P60 billion. But we do not know who are the private investors who will benefit from this huge amount of taxpayers’ money,” he said.

Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima has recommended to President Aquino the use of the fund to settle P12 billion in claims made by two public utility firms.

Isabela Rep. Rodolfo Albano III said the ratification of the conference committee report on the budget “is solid proof of the commitment of Congress to pass on time an appropriations program aimed at improving the quality of life of Filipinos.

“It will allow President Aquino to sign the spending bill before yearend and averts the possibility of the government running on a reenacted 2015 budget,” he said.

It would also enable the Department of Budget and Management to release funds at the start of the New Year “so we can sustain the nation’s economic growth.”

Albano pointed out that both Aquino and Congress did not want a reenacted budget “even though it would favor the administration, especially during an election season.”