The Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Senator Sonny Angara, has endorsed for plenary approval Committee Report No. 332 which contains the P5.024-trillion national budget for 2022.
This marks the start of lengthy plenary deliberations on the budgets of various government agencies and their attached agencies.
In his sponsorship of the measure, Angara said he hopes that the committee report on next year’s budget marks an “underlying hope that alongside the budget comes the end of the pandemic.”
The senator had earlier said that the Senate will make sure that next year’s budget would still be centered on boosting the country’s response against the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It is really a health budget, at least, from the point of view of the Senate version or the Senate committee report because those are the massive additions or movements in the budget,” Angara said in an online interview.
“It's a COVID recovery budget. I say that because a lot of the interventions were really dictated by COVID,” he also stressed.
According to Angara, P16.245-billion has been added under the budget of the Department of Health (DOH) for the procurement of booster shots.
This is aside from the P45.3-billion unprogrammed appropriations that the Executive department proposed to Congress. In total, funds allocated by the Senate for the procurement of COVID-19 vaccine booster shots is now P61.6-billion.
According to Angara, the finance panel anticipated the need to provide third vaccine/booster jabs to fully vaccinated persons. That is why, next year’s budget is still a “COVID-recovery” budget.
“Because of the situation, the Senate has to prioritize health. It’s based on our experience and we don’t want that we’re caught flat-footed next year, in case, God forbid, here comes a new variant. We need to be ready,” he pointed out.
He also said that the Senate added P51-billion in programmed funds for the Special Risk Allowance (SRA) and other health worker benefits since the National Expenditure Program (NEP) did not specify funds for them.
“So we added a total of P51-billion for that,” Angara said.
Next year’s budget also has P896.4-million for the construction of warehouse hubs for the storage of the vaccines.
The Senate version of the budget measure also included P2.48-billion for the hiring of vaccinators to help improve the vaccination rate of several provinces that do not have enough personnel.