THE House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations has endorsed for approval the budget of the Department of Finance (DOF) for 2020.
In a statement, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said the DOF’s 2020 budget is P17.29-billion, P1.59 billion or 8 percent lower than the P18.89 billion allocation in 2019.
However, if automatic appropriations, unprogrammed appropriations and budgetary support for government owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs) are included, the DOF’s total budget amounts to P56 billion in 2020.
“We will continue to build on our efforts to maintain fiscal stability and to improve our revenue collection performance to achieve inclusive economic growth for our country,” Dominguez said.
“Our fiscal objectives in the DOF were honed to support the administration’s priority programs, such as the massive infrastructure program and public investments to improve the lives of our people,” he added.
The DOF’s automatic appropriations of P1.4 billion, covered retirement and life insurance premiums of P720 million and special accounts in the General Fund of P700 million.
Its unprogrammed appropriations of P211 million include the refund of the service development fee for the Nampedai property in Japan.
The budget support to GOCCs includes the P36.4 billion for the cash transfers under the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion Act (TRAIN).
The DOF budget also covers the P97 million for the implementation of the specialized tax training and education management program of the Philippine Tax Academy (PTA).
The unprogrammed funds also cover the P500-million subsidy for the Trade and Investment Development Corp. of the Philippines (TIDCORP) for its capacity to cover additional guarantee volume it committed to deliver in 2020.
DOF said this will address the monitoring by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) of capital adequacy and TIDCORP’s liquidity.
Among DOF attached agencies, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) received the largest allocation worth P8.46 billion followed by the Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) with P4.77 billion and Bureau of Customs (BOC), P1.3 billion.
The higher BIR budget will help finance the salaries of additional employees the agency plans to hire next year. The BIR plans to hire 777 new employees next year.
This will increase the BIR’s manpower to 11,448 government workers in 2020 from the current estimate of 10,671 employees.
For the BTr, the higher budget will be used to pay the final installment of the paid-in capital of the country to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
“It’s proposed budget also maintained the P2-billion insurance premium for government assets against natural or human-induced calamities, epidemics, crises, and catastrophes,” DOF said.
While the BOC’s budget is one of the largest among DOF-attached agencies, this represented a 14 percent decrease from the proposed P2.26 billion.
The decrease was due to the non-approval of the Medium-Term Information and Communications Technology Harmonization Initiative (MITHI) projects under its modernization program.
Meanwhile, the budget of the Office of the Secretary amounts to P836.61 million and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), P550.68 million.
The remaining five DOF-attached agencies with a total proposed budget of P421.44 million is only 2 percent of the general appropriations of the proposed 2020 DOF budget.
These agencies are the Bureau of Local Government Finance (BLGF), P259.48 million; Privatization Management Office (PMO), P81.54 million; National Tax Research Center (NTRC), P62.26 million; Central Board of Assessment and Appeals (CBAA), P18.16 million; and Insurance Commission (IC), P6,000.