House, Cabinet execs to discuss 2023 budget

MANILA, Philippines — The ruling party, along with its allied political parties that comprise the super majority coalition at the House of Representatives, will have its own meeting with economic managers to deliberate on the proposed P5.268-trillion budget for next year.

Reps. Robert Ace Barbers of Surigao del Norte and Mark Enverga (Quezon) – stalwarts of Nacionalista Party and the Nationalist People’s Coalition, respectively – disclosed that their parties had preliminary briefings with Cabinet members to expedite the budget deliberations.

“We already had the scheduled briefing, where we will be raising our parochial concerns, if only to prevent the budget deliberations from getting stalled,” Barbers told a news forum.

“We had the same opportunity as well, but these are general submissions only,” Enverga said.

House officials led by Speaker Martin Romualdez have vowed to work overtime in scrutinizing and approving the executive department’s national budget for 2023, as it starts budget hearings tomorrow.

“The House leadership is eyeing to finish committee and plenary deliberations on the budget proposal before Oct. 1, or before the 19th Congress goes on its first recess that will last up to Nov. 6,” Romualdez said.

“We will perform our constitutional mandate to scrutinize next year’s national budget,” the Leyte representative added, assuring the public that the passage of the 2023 budget will be “transparent.”

“In a manner of speaking, this will be a Unity National Budget,” he said.

Majority Leader Manuel Jose Dalipe, Deputy Speakers Isidro Ungab and Ralph Recto and Reps. Joey Salceda (Albay), Arnolfo Teves (Negros Oriental) and LRay Villafuerte (Camarines Sur) also offered their help in having the National Expenditure Program (NEP) approved at the soonest time possible.

The House appropriations committee headed by Ako Bicol party-list Rep. Zaldy Co has prepared three teams for plenary deliberations on the budget, Dalipe disclosed.

“We have already prepared for this, we have arranged the teams and we will not be remiss in our job to properly scrutinize the budget. We only have one thing to do and that is to pass this budget – the General Appropriations Bill,” Dalipe said.

Ungab said Congress will “work overtime to pass a dynamic, responsive budget.”

“With Congress having the power of the purse, you can expect that we will diligently scrutinize the submitted budget and pass one that will be responsive and dynamic,” he added.

Recto observed that the Department of Social Welfare and Development, which he calls a “big ATM (ayuda, tulong machine),” has apparently the “smallest regular staff of only 2,993.”

Meanwhile, Salceda, who chairs the House ways and means committee, said Marcos’ budget carries “fiscal space to pursue larger public investment program” and has “enough fiscal options to fight inflation, protect economic recovery.”

Villafuerte is hoping that Republic Act 11861, the new law granting additional benefits to solo parents, including a monthly pension of P1,000 to low-income ones, will be released before the year ends.

At the same time, Teves formalized his proposal for the national government to allocate at least P1 billion in every agriculture-based congressional district for the construction and repair of farm-to-market roads.

“The connection of farms and coastal areas to main roads also adds the potential of promoting agro-tourism,” he said in filing House Resolution 250 to help farmers increase even more their agricultural productions, profits and livelihood.

Debt servicing

Contrary to reports, debt payment of the government does not amount to one-third of the proposed P5.268-trillion 2023 national budget, but a mere 11 percent of the total spending plan of the executive department.

Marikina City Rep. Stella Quimbo, senior vice chair of the House appropriations committee, made assurances that debt servicing is “within range” and should not be a cause for concern.

“Let’s not be too worried about debt servicing. That’s the way it really is. That’s usual, we are still within range,” Quimbo told reporters at a weekly news briefing at the House.

“And just to clarify – I’m sure you are referring to one newspaper report – only 11 percent of the P5.268-trillion budget proposed for 2023 will go to debt servicing,” she added.

The senior administration lawmaker, who also teaches at the University of the Philippines College of Economics, pointed out that the government, specifically the previous administration under Rodrigo Duterte, had no other choice but to accept the one-percent increase in debt servicing “because we needed to take out loans during the pandemic.”

At the same time, Quimbo insisted that there is nothing unusual with the borrowings of the administration of President Marcos, where a total of P2.2 trillion is expected to come from foreign borrowings to finance its programs and projects.

Based on the NEP submitted by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), Quimbo disclosed that the national government projected to earn some P3.6 trillion from taxes, fees and proceeds of privatization.

Of the amount, P611 billion will be used to pay debt servicing or payments of loans, which is higher than this year’s P541.3 billion.

The 2023 budget is higher by 4.9 percent than this year’s P5.024-trillion budget.

Cagayan de Oro City Rep. Rufus Rodriguez called on Marcos, the DBM and Congress to restore the P3.3-billion budget cuts of the UP System, including the Philippine General Hospital.

Based on the proposed 2023 national budget, Rodriguez said UP would suffer a funding reduction of P2.5 billion, while the PGH would lose P893 million.

“We should be increasing the budgetary allocations of state universities and colleges (SUCs), which are the poor student’s schools of choice, and government hospitals, which are the pauper’s go-to health facilities, instead of reducing their funds,” he added.

Quimbo, however, assured the public that this is the very reason the House is holding budget deliberations – to check and countercheck which agencies should have more allocations than others – to possibly increase the amount in the end. – Sheila Crisostomo