Acceding to the plea of Malacañang to enact the P3.757-trillion budget to avert delays of several infrastructure projects under the government’s “Build, Build, Build” program, the Senate leadership on Wednesday committed to exert efforts to pass the measure before Congress goes on a Christmas break.
“There’s an appeal from Malacañang and all agencies if we can approve the budget before Jan. 1 of 2019. So our plan, our counter proposal is to work double time,” said Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri.
Once the budget is delayed, Zubiri said the bidding for the projects will also be stopped, and with the election ban on Feb. 8, Zubiri noted that many projects would not be implemented.
“So we are looking at maybe, six months of no implementation of projects. Ang hirap naman noong maraming umaasa. The others—the increase of pension of soldiers and policemen, we will rush (to finish the budget) for them,” Zubiri said.
He said they will start at 10 am on Tuesday to tackle the sponsorship of next year’s budget and continue deliberating it until Dec. 7.
“That’s Tuesday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and if we still need to deliberate from Dec. 10-11 but the plan of the Senate leadership is to have an approval by Dec. 11, latest Dec. 12 and ratification by Dec. 13. That’s why I need to talk to my colleagues if we can comply with the request,” said Zubiri.
“We would like to show the public that the Senate is willing to work double time, over time, even though we just got the budget measure only a few days ago,” he said.
“But we will do our job. We will not shame the public. We will do our duty which is to approve the budget before the end of this year,” he said.
Zubiri said they already had unofficial committee hearings on the budget.
“So it’s a matter of asking fundamental or clarificatory questions during the plenary debates. It’s just a matter of checking if there were realignments, where the alignments were placed, what are the importance of these realignments,” said Zubiri.
He remains confident that they can finish the budget deliberations before the Christmas break.
Senate Presdient Pro Tempore Ralph Recto agreed that there will be no bidding for several projects once the budget is not passed before the year ends.
He added that cash budgeting will be affected. “That’s why, they want as much as possible to pass it this year so that you still have the first quarter to do procurement,” Recto said.
“Definitely, without that public consumption, there will be no government investment, everything will just be election spending. That will slow down the economy,” he said.
In a separate interview after meeting with the Senate leaders to hasten the passage of the national capital outlay, Budget Sec. Benjamin Diokno also expressed fears that many projects under the Build, Build, Build program will be at risk due to the election ban.
Asked on how much are up for bidding for January, Diokno said they can have a pre bid conference right now, but would prefer to ensure that the bidding will be conducted now so that they can immediately start the projects in January.
“Dapat lahat binibid mo na ngayon so dapat by January, go na lahat. Remember, the ideal months for construction is the first six months,” Diokno said.