BUDGET Secretary Amenah Pangandaman yesterday said President Marcos is expected to veto “two to three” items in the 2023 General Appropriations Act (GAA), or the national budget, which is scheduled to be signed on Friday.
“On Friday, the President will sign our General Appropriations Act. Right now, we are working on the veto message, and then consolidating all the numbers, the amendments and changes that the bicameral committee ratified last week,” Pangandaman said during the Kapihan sa Manila Bay forum.
“If the President signs this on the 16th, I think it will be the earliest signed budget,” she added.
Pangandaman said that the President’s veto message is “very friendly.” “I think we only have two to three direct vetoes, and all the rest are just general and conditional observations,” she also said.
The secretary of the Department of Budget and Management said that “when we turned over the NEP (National Expenditure Program) to them (House of Representatives and Senate), we only asked for one thing and that is, when they make changes, hopefully, it is in sync and anchored on the medium-term fiscal framework and the eight-point socioeconomic agenda.”
Pangandaman noted that roughly P70 billion of the Malacañang-proposed 2023 budget has been realigned and “most of it went to our priority sectors, like education, social assistance, and then I think they also included an amount for the EDSA bus carousel.” — Angela Celis
