LAWMAKERS will convene today to reconcile the disagreeing provisions in the versions of the Senate and the House of Representatives of the proposed P5.024-trillion national budget next year.
An advisory from the Office of Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara, who is the chairman of the Senate finance committee, said the bicameral meeting will be held at 11 a.m. at the Garden Ballroom of the EDSA Shangri-la Hotel in Mandaluyong City.
The reconciled version of the money measure is expected to be approved and ratified after four days, or by Friday.
The Senate contingent is led by Angara as chairman, with Senate majority leader Juan Miguel Zubiri and Senators Pia Cayetano, Cynthia Villar, Joel Villanueva, Sherwin Gatchalain, Richard Gordon, Christopher Go, Imee Marcos, Risa Hontiveros, Grace Poe, Ronald dela Rosa, and Nancy Binay as members.
The Senate on Wednesday last week, passed its version of the 2022 General Appropriations Bill (GAB) on second and third reading after it was certified as urgent by President Duterte last September 29.
Senate President Vicente Sotto III has committed that next year’s budget measure will be ratified by both houses of Congress this week.
Among the significant differences in the proposed budget measure is the appropriation for the Department of Health (DOH, which senators increased to P230.11 billion as against the House-approved budget of P182.67 billion.
The Senate realigned appropriations from other agencies to fund the benefits and compensation of healthcare workers, emergency hiring of workers, the emergency hiring of medical frontliners, purchase of lab equipment, for the operations of labs including the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine, operation of the DOH’s Epidemiology and Surveillance Program, and hiring of around 25,000 contact tracers.
Angara said amendments to special provisions were also introduced for the purchase and allocation of Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs, medicine, and vaccines for COVID-19, such as Molnupiravir.
The Senate version likewise gave the education sector a lion’s share of the national budget, with the Department of Education’s budget seeing an increase of P6.7 billion. State universities and colleges, on the other hand, will receive a total of P26.56 billion while the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) will get P1.46 billion, according to the Senate Committee on Finance Chairman.
