House halfway through debates on 2024 budget

MANILA, Philippines — The House of Representatives is halfway through plenary debates over the proposed P5.768-trillion national budget for 2024, with just about a dozen more agencies whose spending plans have yet to be scrutinized by lawmakers.

On the second week of deliberations, the only government offices whose allocations are to face congressional review are the Departments of Energy, Agriculture, Health, Public Works and Highways, Foreign Affairs, Transportation, Budget and Management, and Environment and Natural Resources.

Also up are the Department of Education, which will be reviewed shortly after that of the Office of the Vice President because VP Sara Duterte heads it in concurrent capacity, and the Office of the President and its attached agencies as well as the independent constitutional body Commission on Audit.

Already, the lower chamber of the bicameral Congress terminated debates for 15 offices, including their own, and which also included the judiciary, Office of the Ombudsman, Commission on Elections and Commission on Human Rights.

Ten departments have also been passed upon, among them the Departments of Tourism, Trade and Industry, National Defense, Information and Communication Technology, Interior and Local Government, Justice, Migrant Workers, Labor and Employment, Social Welfare and Development, and Human Settlements and Urban Development.

The budget of the two houses of Congress – the Senate and the House led by Speaker Martin Romualdez – has a P28.4-billion allocation for fiscal year 2024, which is P10.7 billion lower that this year’s (2023) approved P39.1-billion budget.

The bicameral legislature earmarked P10.1 billion for personnel services of the Senate and the House and allotted P13.9 billion for maintenance and other operating expenses, while a separate P4.35 billion was earmarked for the construction of the new Senate building in Taguig City.

Rep. Zaldy Co, chairman of the House appropriations committee, believes the lower chamber is on schedule to pass House Bill 8980 (General Appropriations Bill of 2024) before Congress goes on its Sept. 30 break.

The internal target of the House is to complete floor debates on HB 8990 and transmit it to the Senate within two weeks. This would allow senators ample time to craft its version of the budget and get a final version signed by President Marcos into law before Christmas Day.

‘P2.46 trillion must come from borrowings’

The government needs nearly half of its total proposed P5.7-trillion national budget for 2024 to be sourced from borrowings even as the country’s debt has ballooned to P14.2 trillion in July as per records from the Bureau of Treasury.

“From borrowings, it would be P2.46 trillion,” Rep. Stella Luz Quimbo, senior vice chairperson of the House committee on appropriations, told Camarines Sur Rep. Gabriel Bordado during last week’s start of plenary debates for the government’s spending plan next year.

The Marikina congresswoman said the national government would need 43.32 percent of the national budget from borrowings, while the remaining 57 percent will be sourced from local revenues generated by government agencies.

A congressional think tank has said that the Philippines’ debt burden is growing faster than the overall budget increase, and over half of the 2024 budget can no longer be allocated to productive expenses.

While the national government’s expenditure program has been steadily going up, the rate of its increase is much slower than the growth of the debt burden since 2021, the Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department said.

Since 2016, the Philippines has more than doubled its debt as it sought to finance big-ticket infrastructure projects and fund its pandemic response.