Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon on Friday urged newly-appointed Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Lt. Gen. Dionardo Carlos to review the PNP’s use of its anti-insurgency funds. Drilon challenged the incoming PNP leadership as he finds it suspicious that the PNP conducted about 13...
Senator Sonny Angara on Thursday, Nov. 11 rejected insinuations made by a colleague that the Senate could be seen as a supporter of the New Peoples’ Army (NPA) if the funding for the government’s anti-insurgency task force would suffer drastic cuts. Angara, during the continuation of the...
Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson on Wednesday, Nov. 10 said it is high time that the government devolve its procuremnet of supplies and implementation of projects to the local government units (LGUs) as national agencies have shown bad procurement decisions, including the transfer of P42-billion...
The government will use the savings from the 2021 national budget to purchase some 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines which would be used as booster shots. Senator Sonny Angara, who chairs the Senate finance committee, and sponsor of the proposed P5.024-trillion national budget for 2022, said...
Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon on Wednesday, Nov. 10 proposed incentivizing the opening of face-to-face classes by giving state universities and colleges (SUCs) and public schools access to the P3.5-billion fund allocated for the retrofitting of education institutions under the proposed...
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...
Some senators on Monday, Nov. 8 expressed readiness to tackle the amendments to the proposed P5-trillion national budget. Senator Sonny Angara, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, said the many of the committee report amendments are focused on boosting the government’s COVID-19 response,...
Senator Sherwin Gatchalian has urged the Department of Education (DepEd) to accelerate its hiring process and fill the remaining vacant teaching positions. Gatchalian noted that the DepEd is seeking an additional P2.58-billion in 2022 to hire 10,000 teachers, yet more than 30,000 teaching positions...
Senator Cynthia Villar on Friday could not help but lose her temper when she scrutinized the proposed P505-million budget of the National Tobacco Administration’s (NTA) budget for 2022. NTA, an agency under the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture (DA), had included in its proposed...
Senators are eyeing a special provision under the proposed 2022 General Appropriations Act (GAA) that would put an end to the practice of government agencies of transferring their funds to the Department of Budget and Management’s Procurement Service (DBM-PS) and the Philippine International...
Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque doesn't think Congress--in particular, the Senate--would allow a reenacted national budget to be signed for 2022, an election year. Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque (Photo from Harry Roque's Facebook) Roque was the sole guest of the Kapihan sa Manila Bay...
President Duterte has dared the Senate to make good of its supposed threats to slash the allocations of certain agencies amid the ongoing 2022 national budget hearings of the legislative chamber. JUST DO IT--President Duterte challenges the Senate to significantly reduce the budgets of certain...