|
Friday, January 12, 2007
Bicameral body resolves 2007 budget impasse
MANILA -- The bicameral conference committee has broken the deadlock in the discussions on the proposed P1.126 trillion national budget for this year, Senator Franklin M. Drilon announced on Thursday.
Drilon, who chairs the Senate finance committee, said after three meetings with his House counterpart, Albay Representative Joey Salceda, the bicameral committee agreed on a compromise version of the budget that shall be submitted for ratification by both chambers of Congress when sessions resume later this month.
Sun.Star Network Online's 12th Asean Summit Watch
He also said a technical group will be ironing out the details of the measure.
"Congressman Joey Salceda and I are confident that the budget bill can be presented for the President's signature before Congress adjourns on February 10," Drilon said.
Drilon said as part of the compromise, the bicameral conference committee agreed to realign the controversial P4.7 billion allocation for the Rice Distribution Program in Schools proposed by Malacañang to the following items:
* An additional amount of P2.613 billion will be allocated to the school building program of the Department of Education (DepEd). In addition to the 12,226 new classrooms to be built under the President's budget, the new allocation will result in the additional construction of 5,400 classrooms and will bring the current nationwide classroom shortage to only 2,961 units. The appropriation for school buildings this year will now total P5.313 billion;
* An allocation of P2 billion will be given to a nutrition feeding program to be administered by DepEd. Dubbed as "Malusog na Simula, Yaman ng Bansa", the nutrition program, the project will involve the distribution of food supplements such as milk, coco-pandesal, and vegetable based noodles to public schools to address the malnutrition problem among our school children, which is the original intent of the DepEd's nutrition program;
* An additional budget of P873 million will be allocated for the creation of additional teaching positions that will effectively wipe out the shortage of public school teachers in the country. Thus the total allocation for new teachers now stands at almost P2 billion. Priority in the hiring of new teachers will be given to those in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and general science.
Drilon said the bicameral committee also retained the P400 million intelligence fund of the Office of the President.
"The Senate panel agreed to this out of respect for the time-honored tradition of Congress allowing Malacañang to determine the appropriations for the Office of the President," he said.
The proposed 2007 national budget now stands at P1.126 trillion, which is broken down as follows: P574.12 billion for new appropriations, P318.18 billion for debt servicing; P183.9 billion for Internal Revenue Allocation (IRA) of local governments; and P49.52 billion for other automatic appropriations. (CPB/Sunnex)
For more Philippine news, visit Sun.Star Davao. (January 12, 2007 issue)
Write letter to the editor. Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board. Click here. |
|
|
|
[return to top]
[home]
|
|
Summit goes on; RP on high alert