PRESIDENT Duterte is due to sign the 2020 General Appropriations Bill today, January 6. It is already six days in the year, but the President chose to delay his signing of the bill so he would have a little more time to look at certain budget provisions more closely.
Last year, we may recall, the national budget bill for 2019 was late three months and was approved by Congress only in April, 2019, as senators and congressmen could not agree on certain provisions that appeared to be “pork barrel” placed there by congressional leaders. The stalemate was broken only when Senate President Vicente Sotto III agreed to send the budget to Malacanang, even with the questioned provisions.
He wrote the President that the Senate was sending the bill to Malacanang with all its disputed provisions, so as not to further delay its approval and implementation. But he told the President it still contained R75 billion in pork barrel. The President simply vetoed the R75 billion.
This year, Sen. Panfilo Lacson said the budge bill contains R83 billion in lump sums without any projects specified, parked in the budgets of various government agencies, mostly in the Department of Public Works and Highways. They could be pork barrel, but he said the Senate is leaving it to the President and his close economic advisers in Malacanang to decide whether or not to veto them, as he did last year.
On the other hand, Davao City Rep. Isidro Ungab, chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, has assured that the House budget bill contains no pork barrel and no parked funds.
The important thing is that the three-month delay of last year’s budget is not happening this year. That delay set back the implementation of so many government projects and this in turn lowered the country’s Gross National Product.
We should have no such problem this year. The six-day delay in the signing of the 2020 budget wiil have little or no effect. More important is President Duterte’s decision on some of the provisions questioned by Senator Lacson but defended by Congressman Ungab. We trust that President Duterte will make the right decisions.
