Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel III foresees animated discussions of the contentious budget for the Department of Agriculture-Office of the Secretary (DA-OSEC) at the bicameral
committee, saying many issues have to be ironed out.
Pimentel cited the reduction of the DA’s proposed budget in the General Appropriations Act (GAA).
“So that means a total of P22 billion was slashed by the Senate in the proposed budget of the DA-OSEC,” Pimentel said.
With the reduction, he said the department’s OSEC budget now stands at P92.1 billion as opposed to the original P114 billion.
Pimentel then asked Sen. Cynthia Villar, sponsor of the DA budget, the reason for the cutdown.
Villar said they see the budget for the office “as too big, so they have to fix it.”
She also noted that the department’s proposed budget was not P85 billion, but in the 2024 NEP, it was P92 billion.
“Because the one passed by the Lower House is bigger, so we have to settle that,” she said.
Pimentel then inquired from Villar the huge shifts in the budget starting from the House of Representatives version.
Villar explained that the Senate particularly removed the realignment made by the House for the Agribusiness and Marketing Services (AMAS) which amounts to P20 billion.
As the DA failed to explain how this will be spent, the Senate decided to scrap the budget for AMAS.
However, the National Irrigation Administration appeared to have emerged as a winner when its proposed budget was nearly doubled from P41 billion to P81 billion.
Allocations for the Philippine Fisheries Development Authority, the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) and other attached corporations of the DA were likewise raised.