THE House of Representatives on Monday began its plenary debates on the P3.35-trillion national budget for 2017 that Malacañang says carries President Rodrigo Duterte’s agenda for “real change.”
In his sponsorship speech for House Bill 3408, Davao City Rep. Karlo Alexei Nograles said the 2017 national budget “aims to ensure that our limited resources are maximized towards making our government work better for our people, most especially those in the countrysides who have felt forgotten and neglected.”
The Finance Department on Monday submitted to the House the first package of tax reforms designed to lower the personal income taxes rates while raising revenue to help finance the Duterte administration’s 10-point socioeconomic agenda for inclusive growth.
The first of the four sets of tax reforms was submitted to the House committee on ways and means led by Rep. Dakila Carlo Cua.
Those proposals include the restructuring of the personal income tax or PIT system, the expansion of the value-added tax base by reducing the coverage of its exemptions, the adjustment of the excise taxes imposed on petroleum products, and the restructuring of the excise tax on vehicles.
The PIT reforms include the reduction of the personal income tax to 25 percent from 32 percent and a shift to a modified gross tax system.
Nograles said the proposed national budget for next year was pro-poor as it “expands the productive capacities of the national economy to ensure that the poor are enabled to engage in the processes of and benefit from the fruits of growth.”
“It is a budget that pours public resources where it counts most: to support the policy and program infrastructures for social change and sustained economic development,” Nograles said.
The proposed budget for next year is 11.6 percent higher than the 2016 national budget of P3.002 trillion.
With a higher budget, Nograles said, the government would have more room to finance socioeconomic services to ensure that no one was left behind in the “pursuit of equitable prosperity.”
“In order for real change to happen, growth must be felt by all”•especially by the most disadvantaged classes in our society,” Nograles said.
The Budget Department says the 2017 national budget is 20.4 percent of the GDP compared to this year’s 20.1 percent.
The 10 agencies that will receive the top allocations are Department of Education (P567.5 billion), Department of Public Works and Highways (P458.6 billion), Department of Interior and Local Government (P150 billion), Department of National Defense (P134.5 billion), Department of Social Welfare and Development (P129.9 billion), Department of Health (P94 billion), State Universities and Colleges (P58.8 billion), Department of Transportation (P55.4 billion), Department of Agriculture (P45.2 billion), and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (P41.7 billion).