‘2024 budget to focus on education, health’

MANILA, Philippines — The proposed P5.768-trillion National Expenditure Program (NEP) for 2024, or the so-called post-pandemic budget, will focus on education, health system, strengthening the military, infrastructure, agriculture, transportation and food security, according to Sen. Sonny Angara.

Angara, who chairs the Senate committee on finance, yesterday allayed fears that the budgets for education and health were cut in the NEP as submitted by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to Congress.

“When you look at the budget of education and health in the past years, at the beginning, they were low, but when it comes to the end they increased. The NEP is submitted to the House of Representatives and Senate, goes through the budgetary process and when it comes out, it becomes the GAA (General Appropriations Act). That is the final result. The budget is scrutinized and the budgets of education and health are higher,” he said in Filipino and English an interview over dzBB radio.

The senator also urged the public to watch the implementation of the projects in their area.

“While the Senate approves the budget, the implementation is monitored by COA (Commission on Audit), but it’s important for the people to be vigilant,” he said.

“This is the so-called post-pandemic budget. We are not focused on the pandemic because we are out (of it). But we are left a lot behind in education. We have what is called a learning deficit. And since we are coming from a pandemic, we need to look at the health sector. President Marcos just signed the (law on) Regional Specialty Centers, that, it must be funded – if not this year, then the following. Then, the strengthening of our health system. That is also very important,” he added.

While the House has to complete its deliberation of the proposed NEP 2024 and transmit it to the Senate before the upper chamber can start deliberating it, the finance sub-committees will soon start scrutinizing the budget for all the departments and government agencies.

Aside from education and health, Angara noted that the Senate would also work on the budget to strengthen our military.

“We have current events in the world and we want to secure our territory, our security,” he said.

The senator was referring to China’s intrusion in the West Philippine Sea, where the Chinese Coast Guard attacked with a water cannon a Philippine vessel en route to a resupply mission to Ayungin Shoal.

The Senate would also look into the infrastructure projects, according to Angara.

“That (infrastructure) is also important to reduce traffic, to improve the flow and importation of people’s equipment. The transport, the infrastructure, beautifying our airports,” he said.

“As for agriculture, with the increase in the prices of rice, that’s included in the effort to strengthen our food security,” he added.

Angara likewise assured that there would be an increase in the medical assistance for indigent patients (MAIP), which is intended to provide medical assistance to patients seeking consultation, rehabilitation, examination or otherwise confined in government hospitals.

The senator, however, said that there would be “reductions” from the budgets of some agencies and offices because of the removal of non-recurring expenses.

“These include infrastructure projects that (have been) implemented in the current year, so the amounts for these are removed for next year’s budget proposals. But these budgets usually go up by the time we have gone through the budget process in the House and Senate,” he added.

As for the reduction in the proposed 2024 budget of the University of the Philippines (UP) system in the NEP, Angara said he sees no reason for concern because “this will be rectified and increased by the time December comes and we’ve been through the budgetary process.”

In his Twitter account, former senator Panfilo Lacson posted that “45 projects in the 2023 GAA and 26 items in the NEP 2024 have double, triple, quadruple and quintuple appropriations, thus excessively, unreasonably, unnecessarily and unconscionably bloating fund allocations in the range of 109 percent to 328 percent. Sadly, nobody seems to mind at all.”

Looking at the proposed national budget, Angara noted that his experience going over the last four GAAs has shown consistent support for the education and health sectors from Congress.

Under the 2023 GAA, specialty hospitals operated by the Department of Health, namely the Lung Center of the Philippines, National Kidney and Transplant Institute, Philippine Children’s Medical Center, Philippine Heart Center and the Philippine Institute of Traditional and Alternative Health Care were allocated a total of almost P7 billion.

Angara said the amount represents an increase of P1.1 billion from the P5.8 billion they received in 2022 and a hike of P2 billion from the P4.9 billion proposed by the executive branch in the NEP 2023.

The same was true for the budget of the MAIP, which, the senator said has consistently been hiked by Congress.

In the proposed NEP 2024, he noted that the MAIP is provided with a proposed budget of P22.3 billion, down from the P32.6 billion under the 2023 GAA.

The NEP 2023 only contained P22.39 billion for the MAIP, but through the interventions of the members of Congress, the program ended up with the final amount of P32.6 billion.

“The increases in the budgets of the specialty hospitals, the MAIP and the health sector in general would benefit millions of Filipinos, especially the poor, for their medical and health care requirements,” Angara said.

He added that the budget for the MAIP has increased annually from P9.4 billion in 2019 to P10.5 billion in 2020, P17 billion in 2021, P21.4 billion in 2022, and P32.6 billion in 2023.

Lawmakers expect a similar increase in the program in the final version of the 2024 budget.

In education’s case, Angara said NEP increases are also expected, particularly with the budgets of the state universities and colleges (SUCs), including the UP system.

“For three straight years, we have seen increases in the budgets of the SUCs. From P73.7 billion in 2020, this went up to P85.9 billion in 2021, P104.17 billion in 2022 and P107 billion in 2023. Similar to the health sector, we also expect increases in the budgets of the SUCs and UP once Congress is done deliberating on the NEP 2024,” he added.