THE Senate and the House of Representatives on Monday temporarily agreed to set to P50 billion the two houses’ “re-prioritization” projects.
In an interview after the bicameral conference committee hearing on the P3.757-trillion national budget for 2019, House Committee on Appropriations Chairman Rolando Andaya Jr. said the fund for these projects or the “institutionalized amendments” may still increase, if needed.
The agreement came after Andaya bared during the hearing that senators introduced almost P190 billion in so-called insertions. He admitted that the lower chamber has P51 billion under the proposed 2019 budget.
“The Senate version is seeking an amendment or a total net increase of around P190 billion and the House is requesting for P51 billion,” Andaya said.
For her part, Senate Committee on Finance Chairman Loren Legarda explained that the “P68 billion of that are unprogrammed appropriations, while almost P50 billion of that were amendments of my vice chairman [Sen. Panfilo Lacson], and I accepted his amendments.”
Legarda added, “I hope this will not be misconstrued as my amendments. Honestly, I don’t consider that as pork because I get a lot of texts, calls from agencies. Personal are different from institutional amendments,” she said.
For his part, Lacson said his P4 billion “institutional amendment” was for the activation of an infantry division of both the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police.
“Why we don’t agree on a pie? We also acknowledge that you congressmen have legislative districts to attend to. Let’s have a certain figure to work on…but huwag naman unlimited,” Lacson said.
Not pork
Meanwhile, lawmakers also clarified that these “institutionalized amendments” are not the unconstitutional “pork barrel.”
The Senate has yet to identify which programs or projects will be funded under this “re-prioritization” projects pending its caucus to consult its members whether the amount would be enough to cover the requests of government agencies.
On the part of the House, it will prioritize the budget increase being push by Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for the Department of Health, Department of Agriculture and for the government’s housing programs, according to Andaya.
Earlier, Arroyo asked the bicameral conference committee on the proposed 2019 budget to increase the DOH budget by P10 billion to improve health facilities and to retain more health personnel.
Arroyo instructed Andaya to put an additional P5 billion for the Health Facilities Program to upgrade government hospitals and barangay health centers.
Arroyo also wants to augment by P5 billion the Health Human Resources Development program to prevent the reported mass layoff of some 6,000 health personnel—doctors, nurses and dentists—in government health facilities.
She asked to increase the budget of the Department of Agriculture by P20 billion to help farmers and lower the inflation.
She, likewise, asked the bicameral panel to allocate P350 million to the Department of Public Works and Highways to help more than 8,000 urban poor families at the National Government Center in Quezon City to acquire the land they have long been occupying.
Tough timeline
Moreover, during the bicameral conference, Legarda said Congress is eyeing to produce a reconciled version of the proposed 2019 budget by January 30, and approve it before Congress goes on break.
Congress will take a break on February 6 to May 19, 2019, for the midterm elections.
However, a member of the bicameral conference committee, who asked not to be named, said it is a big challenge for them to approve the 2019 budget as Congress has only five session days before its break.