A TOP official of the Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) allayed apprehensions that the reenacted budget for 2019 would derail preparations and operations for the 30th Southeast Asian (SEA) Games the country is hosting from November 30 to December 11 next year.
Tagaytay City Rep. Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino clarified to the BusinessMirror on Wednesday that the P17.044 billion allotted for the hosting of the 30th SEA Games would remain even though the Senate has yet to act on the proposed P3.757 trillion for 2019.
“The reenacted budget will not affect the SEA Games hosting at all because the budget falls under projects for the coming year,” Tolentino said. “Only to be reenacted—until after the 2019 budget is approved—are those that fall under personnel services, loan obligations, among others.”
The reenacted budget of P P3.767 trillion for 2018, according to the Senate, is expected to take effect until February next year.
The Senate said the House fell behind in approving the 2019 General Appropriations Bill and only received the budget just days before adjourning for the holidays last December 15. Sessions will resume on January 14.
The SEA Games hosting budget was included in the 2019 budget of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) when Alan Peter Cayetano was its secretary. Cayetano resigned to run for Congress in Taguig, and his successes, Teodoro Locsin Jr., requested that the Senate Committee on Finance transfer the funds to another agency, particularly to the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC).
The PSC is the government arm for sports under the Office of the President and has the mandate to release funds for sports development.
The P17.044-billion SEA Games hosting budget was broken down into P7.5 billion to the Office of the Foreign Affairs Secretary and P9.544 billion to the Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA), which is building a modern sports complex—athletics and football arena and aquatics center—at the New Clark City in Capaz, Tarlac.
The P7.5 billion will also be allocated as follows: P1.371 billion for sports, P1.326 billion for venues, P1.525 for games services, P107 million for medical and doping, P368,680 million for athletes village operations, P125,320 million for volunteers, P47,840 million for accreditation and uniforms, P450 million for ceremonies, P296 million for broadcast and media, P525 million for PR and marketing, P55 million for international relations and protocol, P566 million for administration and finance, P38 million for human resources, P446 million for IT and telecommunications and P250 million for security.
The Philippines is hosting 55 sports—vovinam, a Vietnamese martial art, was dropped earlier this month because of lack of participants—which is the biggest in SEA Games history.
The number of sports surpassed the 44 that Indonesia programmed when the games were played in Palembang in 2011.
The program is composed of Category 1 sports archery, badminton, baseball/softball, basketball, billiards, bowling, boxing, canoe/traditional boat race, chess, cycling, dancesport, fencing, football, golf, gymnastics, handball, hockey, ice hockey, ice skating, judo, karatedo and modern pentathlon.
The Category 2 sports are muay, pencak silat, polo, rowing, rugby sevens, sailing/windsurfing, sepak takraw, skateboarding, shooting, soft tennis, squash, surfing, table tennis, triathlon, volleyball, weightlifting, wrestling and wushu.
Rounding out the sports in Category 3 are arnis, e-sports, floorball, jiu-jitsu, kickboxing, kurash, lawnbowls/petanque, netball, obstacle course, sambo, underwater hockey and wakeboarding.
Image credits: Nonie Reyes