The Department of Agriculture (DA), concurrently headed by President Ferdinand “Bongbong” R. Marcos Jr., will likely be one of the top 5 departments to receive the biggest allocation under the proposed P5.268-trillion national budget next year, the Department of Budget and Management said.
Budget Secretary Amenah F. Pangandaman said the President already identified agriculture and education as among the departments that he wants to be prioritized in terms of funding.
The state is mandated under the 1987 Constitution to assign the highest budget priority to education.
“Education should always be number 1, nasa Constitution, maybe top 5 na [ang agriculture department]” Pangandaman told reporters in a chance interview on Wednesday.
If realized, this would be an improvement for DA, which has been ranked 7th or 8th place among the top 10 departments with the biggest budget allocations, at least in recent years. Under the enacted national budget last year, the DA along with the National Irrigation Administration even had a lower allocation at P102.5 billion, down by 0.2 percent from the previous year’s P102.7 billion.
Former Agriculture Secretary William Dar in May this year said they are set to propose a bigger budget of P270 billion for 2023, lamenting that they have been “under-budgeted” and “neglected” for the past three decades.
While Pangandaman said they don’t have yet the specific budget allocation per agency, she said she is set to present the proposed national budget to the Cabinet on July 28. After this, the budget chief said they are targeting to formally submit to Congress the proposed national budget called the National Expenditure Program on August 22.
Apart from agriculture and education, the budget chief said the administration is determined to keep the government’s infrastructure spending to 5 to 6 percent of the country’s GDP.
“I presented the timeline, he wanted to make sure we stick to the timeline and have it passed before at least December,” she said.
Although the ceiling for next year’s proposed national budget only rose by 4.9 percent year-on-year— the lowest increase in a decade, Pangandaman said they would still try to maximize and work within the budget ceiling.
As part of their considerations in preparing the budget, she said they have already presented to the Cabinet the top 5 agencies, which posted the highest utilization and those that lagged behind.