Nograles rules out reenacted 2019 budget, to push obligations-based funding
THERE will be no reenacted budget for 2019 even with the indefinite suspension of deliberations on the proposed P3.7 trillion cash-based allocation at the House of Representatives, Rep. Karlo Nograles of Davao City said on Sunday.
“We don’t want a reenacted budget. Discussions on reenacted budget only happens when it is already December and the proposed national budget is yet to be signed into law or if there is a slim chance of it being signed into a law,” Nograles said in a radio interview.
Nograles, chairman of the appropriations committee, issued the statement after the House opposed the cash-based scheme, in which government agencies would be mandated to spend all their obligated funds in a year or lose it. Lawmakers fear this will reduce the resources of their respective districts.
“We re not discussing the possibility of a reenacted budget and nobody should do that,” Nograles said.
The national budget has been obligations-based, which means a government agency who won’t be able to spend all of its funds for the year keeps them until the following year to finish pending obligations.
The proposed cash-based reduced the budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways by P95 billion; Department of Education, P77 billion; and Department of Health, P35 billion.
House Majority Leader Rolando Andaya Jr, of Camarines Sur described the budget cuts as something “so deep that it hits a major artery of government service.”
Rep. Raymond Villafuerte of Camarines Sur, House Appropriations panel vice chairman, warned that the cash-based system could doom the administration’s Build, Build, Build program.
“The whole country is excited about the ‘Build, Build, Build.’ With the slash in budget, you can’t build enough,” Villafuerte said in a separate statement.
Nograles assured the public that the House would restore the proposed 2019 budget to obligations-based since it is a must in implementing the Free College Education law and other big-ticket infrastructure projects where timelines do not jive with the fiscal year, which ends in December. LLANESCA T. PANTI
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