Congress on Monday approved the Palace-proposed P3.35-trillion national budget after the Senate approved its own version of the annual money measure, paving the way for bicameral talks with the House of Representatives to hammer out a reconciled 2017 budget for final approval before lawmakers adjourn for Christmas beginning December 16.
“Yes, we completed the budget bill on schedule,” Senate President Aquilino L. Pimentel III said.
The Senate Majority Leader earlier vowed to the BusinessMirror the senators were set to pass the budget bill in one sitting on Monday.
Sen. Vicente C. Sotto III added that lawmakers committed to approve the final version of the budget before the yearend adjournment.
“Definitely, we will pass the budget before Congress goes on recess,” Sotto added.
This developed as Senate Minority Leader Ralph G. Recto pushed for a minimum 10-percent cut in the bureaucracy’s mobile phone, electricity, travel, gasoline, advertising and other nonessential expenses, which, Recto estimates, would “free billions for health and other social services” in the 2017 national budget.
During the Senate plenary debates on the P3-trillion-plus budget bill, Recto raised the issue citing “many funding gaps in critical services for the poor” that his fellow senators uncovered in the marathon budget deliberations.
For instance, the Senate Minority Leader suggested the “budget peso” may still be stretched by converting “office overhead into medicines, school lunches, and other things poor people and communities need.”
The Senator also noted that next year’s proposed P13.8 billion outlay for water, lighting and electricity could withstand a 10-percent cut without curtailing service and efficiency, estimating that this would generate at least P1.38 billion savings and fund the construction of 1,300 classrooms.
Recto added: “Another example of an expenditure which can be reduced is the government’s travelling expense, which has been budgeted P17.7 billion for next year, recalling that President Duterte himself ordered a stop in unnecessary lakbay aral, a cultural immersion program developed by the Commission on Overseas Filipinos in 1983.
“To implement this, we should cut the travel budget by 10 percent, and there is no shortage of programs the savings can be rechanneled to,” Recto said, pointing out that “travel’s cousin, which is training should be pared down too,” noting taxpayer-funded trainings in resorts and hotels “eat up a large chunk of government funds.”
He surmised that the reason why money is poured into travel and training is that these provide the fastest way to utilize funds. “So when an agency is under pressure to improve its fund absorption capacity, training provides the convenient fast-track. But training need not be in hotels,” he said, suggesting “It can be in-house or in state colleges that offer HRM courses which means they have the manpower and facilities,” he said.
Recto revealed that in the proposed 2017 budget, at least P30.6 billion is earmarked for training and scholarships. “Retain the money for scholarships but reduce the allocation for training,” he said.
According to Recto, the P9.6-billion budget for communications, which cover mobile phone, landline, Internet and postage, is also “another prime candidate for whittling down.”
“Slash it by P1 billion,” the senator suggested, “and this will be a big addition to the P7-billion medicine budget of the health department for 2017.”
At the same time, Recto recommended that the P26.5 billion for consultants and outsourced jobs, booked under “professional services,” can be subjected to downsizing “in a manner that will not cause the termination of contracts of good, skilled and technical people.”
He zeroed in on a big-ticket item in the 2017 budget which, the senator suggests, can be “subjected to a slimming regimen,” pointing to the P84.1 billion allocated for “supplies and materials”.
Recto said “representation expenses” granted to upper-echelon government officials should also be reduced, too. For 2017, P11.7 billion will be set aside for representation bills of top bureaucrats.