‘2020 budget proposal to be submitted in Aug’

THE Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has moved the submission date of the proposal for next year’s P4.1-trillion national budget to next month to ensure that the impasse that delayed the approval of 2019 appropriations would not happen again.

“(The submission of the budget proposal is) within 30 days from [the] SONA (State of the Nation Address), so we have until August 21,”
Budget Officer in Charge-Secretary Janet Abuel told reporters on Monday night.

“But we will not be waiting that long. We’re targeting, worst-case scenario, [the] first half of August….” she added.

Earlier, the Budget official said her department would submit the budget proposal on July 22, the same day as President Rodrigo Duterte’s fourth SONA.

Asked why, she explained that the DBM had opted to wait until the leaders of the new Congress were installed.

“[W]e’ll have to wait because we need to have very close coordination with Congress. So we need to wait for their leadership,” she added.
This strategy, Abuel said, is meant to make sure that the approval of the 2020 budget would not be delayed.

“Its really important to know that we can work with the leadership,” she added.

A dispute between the Senate and the House of Representatives over alleged insertions resulted in a four-and-a-half-month delay in the passage of the 2019 national budget. This forced the government to operate on last year’s budget, limiting it to spend for items detailed in the 2018 outlay and not on programs and projects supposed to be implemented this year.

The would-be-proposed cash budget of P4.1 trillion is 9.1 percent or P343 billion higher than this year’s P3.757 trillion.

Of this amount, 44.9 percent or P1.842 trillion will be allocated to “Tier 1” programs, activities and projects of government agencies. These include the ongoing modernization of the country’s military and the National ID system, as well as various infrastructure projects.

Another P1.345 trillion — 32.8 percent — will go to automatic appropriations, including internal-revenue allotment and net lending; and special purpose funds, including special shares to local governments and a contingent fund.

This leaves P911.7 billion to cover expanded and new programs, activities and projects, accounting for 22.2 percent of the total cash-based budget ceiling, Abuel said in a recent memorandum.

The post ‘2020 budget proposal to be submitted in Aug’ appeared first on The Manila Times Online.