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Sunday, November 20, 2005
Explain budget, Cebu governor urged
CEBU CITY -- Capitol's lawmakers want the province’s chief executive to explain her P2-billion budget proposal for 2006, before they approve it.
The Provincial Board’s (PB) budget committee wants to meet with Governor Gwendolyn Garcia to ask her some questions about her proposed allocations.
The committee agreed during its first hearing last Wednesday to write to the governor and request an audience with her.
The committee members would have started scrutinizing the proposed annual budget but had to adjourn the hearing as two committee members—PB Members Victor Maambong and Joven Mondigo—were absent.
PB Members Gabriel Luis Quisumbing, Jose Mari Gastardo and Agnes Magpale were present. Gastardo moved that they meet with the governor.
In a phone interview last night, Governor Garcia declined to comment on the PB members’ plan because she has yet to receive any word from them.
The governor and the PB had previously tangled over the annual budget. Capitol operated under the reenacted 2003 budget last year after the PB failed to approve the P1.28-billion proposed measure for 2004.
Quisumbing, as committee chairman, will be the one to write the letter to Garcia.
On Saturday, the committee will have a marathon hearing on the budget. They hope to meet with Garcia on that day.
The 2006 budget has to be passed within 90 days before the start of the year, otherwise the 2005 budget will be reenacted until the new budget is passed.
Increases
Garcia’s proposed P2-billion 2006 budget includes an increase of 351 percent for social welfare and 131 percent for health.
This year, social welfare got a total of P4.133 million from the more than P1.7-billion annual budget. The provincial health office, on other hand, was allotted about P74.1 million.
But unlike in previous years, when personnel services got around 45 percent of the whole budget, the 2006 personnel allocation only accounts for 27 percent of the entire budget.
Personnel services, which fall under the general services, social services and economic services expenditures, ate up about P393 million this year.
Early this year, Garcia had started outsourcing personnel of the district hospitals and the engineering department.
This will result in savings as the Provincial Government will no longer bear the salary increases granted every three years, as well as the bonuses of outsourced employees.
More for less
Garcia wants to run the Capitol with a lean and efficient bureaucracy, which delivers “more and more services at less and less cost.”
Garcia has also increased the allocation under subsidies for local government units to P75 million, from P32.9 million in the 2005 budget.
On the other hand, aid to barangays will amount to P75 million, or P50 million larger than the current budget.
In 2006, the Provincial Social Welfare and Development (PSWD) Office also has allocations not be found in previous ones such as P5 million assistance for “individuals in crisis”; P5 million for the welfare of family, women and children; P2 million for the disabled and elderly; and P2 million for the out-of-school youth.
The total PSWD budget has been raised to P18.5 million from the previous P5.2 million. (MBG/Sun.Star Cebu)
(November 20, 2005 issue)
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