DBM: 2020 budget to pass on time
Credit to Author: MAYVELIN U. CARABALLO, TMT| Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2019 16:16:49 +0000
THE Department of Budget and Management (DBM) is optimistic that Congress would approve the proposed 2020 national budget on time.
“The proposed 2020 national budget is already with the House of Representatives. We are confident that they will pass it in due time,” acting Budget Secretary Wendel Avisado told The Manila Times.
His comment came after House Deputy Speaker Luis Raymund Villafuerte Jr. announced the withdrawal of the General Appropriations Bill.
The P4.10-trillion 2020 National Expenditure Program was transmitted to the House on August 20.
Earlier, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia warned that a reenacted 2020 national budget could drag Philippine economic growth to below 5 percent next year.
“We will have a regressing economic growth performance of probably below 5 percent or [somewhere near that figure],” Pernia told lawmakers during a recent Development Budget Coordination Committee briefing on the proposed budget.
Pernia, also the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) chief, said a reenacted budget “is not going to be good” amid the country’s growing population and infrastructure needs.
“[G]overnment spending and even private spending on fixed capital formation will be hampered by reenacted budget, as well,” he added.
The NEDA head pointed out that the country’s economic growth actually “regressed” in the first half of the year because of the delayed approval of the 2019 budget.
“Our growth regressed. We could have achieved 6.5 percent, but we only [posted] 5.5 percent. That is a full one-percentage-point regression in economic growth,” he said.
“We’re hoping that it’s not going to happen again,” he added.