Senate Minority Leader Franklin M. Drilon, citing “excess fats” in the P3.7-trillion 2018 budget bill, on Tuesday moved to realign the surplus funds to solve the country’s ballooning housing backlog now estimated at close to 6 million units.
Lamenting the huge cut in the housing sector’s 2018 budget as an “injustice”, Drilon deplored the proposed P4.4 billion allocated for housing next year, pointing out that this is 70 percent lower than the P15.3-billion budget given to it in 2017.
“Budgetary support is crucial in addressing the poorest sector of our society, and the huge budget cut is the ‘wrong policy thrust’,” Drilon said, protesting that “this is criminal neglect if we look at the budget of the housing sector”.
Drilon disputed the justification given by Sen. Joseph Victor Ejercito, who noted that the National Housing Authority’s (NHA) “low absorptive capacity” prompted the move to decrease the NHA’s 2018 budget allocation “as proposed by the Department of Budget and Management”.
“The absorptive capacity of the NHA is being blamed for this refusal by the economic managers to provide sufficient budget for the housing sector,” Drilon bemoaned, adding: “We should not let our people suffer from these alleged inefficiencies of a bureaucracy, which is even open to question.”
In response, Ejercito affirmed that the NHA has, in fact, obligated 85 percent of its funds in 2016, contrary to claims that the agency has low absorptive capacity.
Drilon, driving home the point, warned that “social problems will just continue to worsen if we continue to commit criminal neglect in our treatment of the housing sector.”
Ejercito, in turn, acknowledged that the housing backlog is projected to reach 6 million by 2022.
This prompted Drilon to insist that the Senate restore the housing sector’s budget cut. “With that kind of backlog, why are we not providing enough resources to our housing sector?”
Prodding the Senate to restore the housing sector’s original budget for next year, the minority leader suggested the funds could be “sourced from the excess fats” in the 2018 budget bill.
For instance, Drilon cited the proposed P3.7-billion budget for intelligence funds the senator notes “has grown tremendously” under the Duterte administration. He justified his proposed solution by stressing “the importance of housing as an economic tool, which has the highest multiplier effect on the economy”.
“For every peso spent for housing, P7 flow back to the economy,” Drilon added. “From the social point of view, housing is very important. From the economic point of view, it is very beneficial,” he concluded.