President Rodrigo Duterte can veto items in the 2019 national budget, particularly the lawmakers’ alleged insertions, Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno said Friday.
Lawmakers could make insertions in the budget, but the President could veto such items “if their projects do not jive with our priorities,” Diokno told ANC television.
Meanwhile, he also said no Philippine property was used as a mortgage in any of China’s loans to the Philippines.
He said the golden rule was to borrow only if the returns were higher than the cost of borrowing, and if the projects had at least a 10-percent economic internal rate of return.
“We do not mortgage our property. It’s a straightforward deal. The internal rate of return has to be higher than the cost of money,” Diokno said.
He said the practice of lawmakers making insertions on the budget was nothing new.
“That’s a normal action by the House. They can change the bill as submitted by the President. That’s their prerogative,” Diokno said.
In September, Majority Leader Rolando Andaya discovered item insertions amounting to P55 billion in a report prepared by the House appropriations committee.
The Duterte administration was set to operate on a reenacted budget in 2019, and the issue of the supposed insertions was blamed for the stalled deliberations on next year’s budget.
Both the House and the Senate, however, have said that they will try to pass the proposed budget before the year ends.