The bicameral conference committee on Friday, November started tackling the P5.268-trillion national budget for 2023 of the Marcos administration, including the proposals for the realignment of confidential and intelligence funds (CIF), that are lodged under the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd).
At the sidelines of the bicameral meeting, Senate Committee on Finance chairman Senator Sonny Angara said he and Sen. Risa Hontiveros have already talked about the necessity of pushing for the Senate amendment.
President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. is proposing a P4.5-billion CIF for the Office of the President (OP), while Vice President Sara Duterte is seeking a P500-million CIF under her office’s budget for 2023.
Both the OVP and the DepEd are under the supervision of the vice president.
The Senate had earlier approved at least P152-million worth of confidential funds of various government agencies to their maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE) in their 2023 budget.
The Senate also reduced the P150-million CIF requested by the DepEd to P30-million; the P120-million was then realigned to the DepEd’s Health Learners Institution Program.
“Yes, we discussed it (CIF) and Senator Hontiveros already said that she hopes that the Senate amendment realigning hundreds of million of CIF to other agencies will be sustained (by the bicameral committee),” Angara said.
Angara also said Congress is targeting to finish the reconciled version of the 2023 national budget bill next week.
“Hopefully next week, so we can sustain the momentum; the OP submitted the budget proposal early and the House of Representatives also passed it early. So I hope we can do so,” the senator said.
Align budget to economic realities
Senator Alan Peter Cayetano, for his part, called on the members of the bicameral committee to align the 2023 national budget with the Marcos administration’s priorities and make it responsive to the country’s effort to recover from the economic realities of the pandemic.
Cayetano said he will continue pushing for budgetary alignments raised by senators during the recent plenary debates that focus on agriculture and public infrastructure.
The lawmaker noted that the P40.842-billion budget falls short of the P50-billion that the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) had requested. He also pointed out that the budget for small-scale irrigation fell from P1.109-billion in 2022 to only P991.11-million in the 2023 budget.
“Life blood ng ating mga magsasaka ang irrigation kaya’t mahalagang mapagbigyan natin sila (Irrigation is the life blood of our farmers, so it is important that we provide them),” Cayetano said.
He also said there is a need to boost the budget for farm-to-market roads which increased from P7.485-billion in 2022 to P13-14-billion in 2023.
The program, he said, still falls short in comparison to the country’s neighbors in Asia.
Senate Minority Leader Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III had also vowed to scrutinize the 2023 national budget and monitor the spending of next year's appropriation.
Pimentel and Hontiveros, both part of the Senate minority bloc, had attempted to prevent lump sum appropriations and realign it to other government agencies to promote transparency but failed.