Drilon: 2005 budget may be reenacted

The government will have to operate under a re-enacted budget early next year due to the failure of the House of Representatives to submit to the Senate its version of the 2006 budget.

Although Senate President Franklin Drilon said he was satisfied with the fast pace of the Senate’s budget deliberations for the 14 agencies, he said the House of Representatives’ failure to speed up its own deliberations was likely to hamper passage of the budget before the end of the year.

"We, at this point, believe that we have to re-enact the budget because at the rate the hearings are going on in the House of Representatives, we do not expect to receive the budget in the next 10 days and therefore there is simply no time for us to go over the 2006 budget," he said.

Drilon said the Senate is on schedule and aims to finish the hearings for all agencies before the holiday break and has moved to review the appropriations ahead of the lower house.

Meanwhile, the approval of the budgets of the National Security Council (NSC) and the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA) was deferred because of the failure of some senators to attend yesterday’s budget hearing.

National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales was also a no-show at the hearing.

"If Mr. Gonzales has indeed resumed work, we will summon him to re-explain the budget of the NSC as we require agency heads to appear before the Senate," Drilon said.

The NSC is seeking a P5-million budget for next year.

Drilon also questioned NICA director Cesar Garcia on the agency’s request for additional funds amounting to P79 million, which is a lot higher than the proposed P31.2 million for the agency.

In the hearing, Garcia stressed the need to improve the country’s cooperation with other countries in Southeast Asia and strategic countries in the European Union to strengthen the anti-terrorism campaign. — Christina Mendez