THE Davao City Treasurer's Office (CTO) assured the source of funds for the P7.8 billion budget for 2018 that was approved on second reading by the Davao City Council last Tuesday, November 7.
Villa Dureza, assistant city treasurer, in an interview with Sun.Star Davao, said that the projected local source of fund for the budget, which was increased from P800 million from last year's budget, will be sourced from the increase of local taxes following the approval of the 2017 Revenue Code or the Amendments for the 2005 Revenue Code of the city.
She said that by 2018, there will be a 10 percent increase on business taxes and more or less 50 percent increase on fees of city regulatory offices that was approved last month by the City Council.
"For the regulatory offices, they have increased more or less 50 percent and we also have Real Property Tax though it was not included [in the declared] local sources," she said, adding that the increase will hopefully be implemented in January 2018 since it will be the time for the renewal of permits.
Based on the copy of the ordinance approving this year's budget, the budget is earmarked at P7.8 billion, P3,325,867,119 of it will be sourced from local sources, and P4,474,132,881 will come from the city's Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA).
This amount came from City Treasurer's Office estimate of 17.4 percent increase of local sources from 2017 to the year 2018 with a difference of P492,444,108 and also from the 7.4 increase of the IRA of the city from 2017 to 2018 with P307,555,892 for a total of P800 million.
The 2017 local source was only pegged at P2,833,423,011 while the IRA is at P4,166.576,989 that formed part of the P7 billion 2017 budget.
Based on the ordinance, the total budget will be used for the aligned projected expenditures of the city pegged at P7,639,481,158 wherein 81.6 percent or P6.2 billion will be allotted for the General Fund, 16.6 percent or P1.2 billion will be allotted for the Development Fund, and 1.8 percent or P134,272,650 will cover the operational expenses of eight economic enterprises of the city.
General fund will cover the expenditures for statutory and contractual obligations, and other lump sum appropriations, personal services, maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE) and capital outlays of the departments, offices and units of the city government of Davao.
The development fund will cover expenditures for infrastructures and non-infrastructure projects including debt servicing for the ensuing year.
Meanwhile, there will be an unappropriated balance of P160,518,842 under the Annual Development Fund, and the Economic Enterprises in the amounts of P72,102,384 and 88,416,458, respectively.
Dureza said that the city mayor will decide on when and where the balance amount will be used and this will need another ordinance.