The head of the House of Representatives’ committee on appropriations on Tuesday voiced concern over the budget cuts in the key agencies under the proposed P3.757-trillion national budget for 2019.
Davao City Rep. Karlo Nograles, the panel’s chairman, made the statement on Tuesday as his committee began its deliberations on the proposed budget, with Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno as the main resource person in the hearing.
Nograles said the proposed 2019 budget”•which is cash-based”•was P10 billion lower than the current P3.767-trillion budget.
The agencies affected by the budget cuts include the Departments of Health, Education and Public Works and Highways.
“Let us address the elephant in the room. You are coming to ask a budget that’s P10 billion lower in absolute terms,” Nograles told Diokno.
“All of us here are concerned with the reductions in the various departments and agencies.”
The Health Department’s proposed budget for 2019 was decreased by P35 billion, the Education Department by P77 billion, and Public Works by P95 billion, Nograles said.
There were also P5-billion reductions in the budgets of the Department of Social Welfare and Development and of the Commission on Elections.
Nograles said the significant budget reductions would hurt the delivery of projects, especially in the rural areas. It would leave the departments out in the cold when it came to development programs.
“All of these concerns could have been addressed if the DBCC had come to us with a bigger budget. I personally was expecting a budget of at least P3.9 trillion,” Nograles said.
The proposed 2019 national budget is cash-based as opposed to the traditional, multi-year and obligations-based budgeting.
The Budget Department has described it as the more efficient budgeting method since it limits incurring obligations and disbursing payments for goods delivered and services rendered, inspected and accepted within the fiscal year.
Diokno told the panel that the proposed 2019 budget and the existing 2018 budget could be compared as “apples to apples” since one was cash-based while the other was obligations-based. Thus, the P10 billion reduction was “misleading,” he said.