HOUSE Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said she will instruct the House contingent on the forthcoming bicameral conference committee hearing into the proposed 2019 budget to make sure that the P20-billion allocation added to the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) budget for 2019 (DA) will not be realigned to other agencies.
“We have to make sure the increase in the DA budget is retained in the final budget because it will enable the DA to implement measures that will help farmers and increase production needed to control inflation,” Arroyo said Monday, January 21, days after the Senate ended its deliberations into the proposed 2019 budget.
Arroyo earlier asked the small committee on the proposed 2019 budget to increase the budget of the DA from P123.7 billion to P143.7 billion to help in the further lowering of inflation.
“The House had increased the budget of DA by P20 billion upon my instruction because I noticed that since my administration, the budget for DA had dropped significantly,” Arroyo said.
She said there is a correlation between the budget allotted to a department to the growth in the particular sector it manages.
“As we were analyzing the budget, we realized that from six percent of the budget in my time, agriculture went down afterwards to 1.5 percent. No wonder we have shortage of food,” Arroyo said.
The House Speaker said she will also ask the House contingent in the upcoming bicameral conference committee hearing if they can allocate P100 million to the National Government Center (NGC) for the acquisition of titles of the more than 6,000 NGC beneficiaries along Commonwealth avenue in Quezon City.
Arroyo reported that the Department of Public Works and Highways during an oversight committee hearing into the implementation of Republic Act (RA) 9207 (National Government Center Housing and Land Utilization Act of 2003) told her that no funding was allocated for the acquisition of titles and reblocking of individual lots for the NGC in the 2019 budget.
The thousands of urban poor families in NGC, Barangay Holy Spirit in Quezon City were awarded their own land during the tenure of Arroyo, as a result of RA 9207.
The Senate is expected to approve on second and third reading the proposed P3.757 trillion budget for 2019 Monday, January 21.
The bicameral conference committee meeting on the disagreeing provisions of the proposed General Appropriations Act is expected to begin this week, reports said. (Keith A. Calayag/SunStar Philippines)