SENATE President Juan Miguel “Migz” Zubiri yesterday said the upper chamber “is fully on track with the budget schedule that we have laid out” after sub-committees of the Senate committee on finance wrapped up last week their hearings on the proposed P5.268 trillion national budget for 2023.
“Over the course of the hearings, our sub-committees carefully combed over the agencies’ programs and spending vis-í -vis the proposed P5.268 trillion budget to ensure that the 4.9 percent increase from this year’s budget is warranted and is crucial to the country’s continued recovery from the pandemic,” Zubiri said in a statement.
This year’s national budget is P5.024 trillion.
Zubiri said finishing the budget briefings at the committee level “is only “halfway up the hill” since the measure will still be subject to discussions during the plenary debates.
He said once Congress resumes its regular sessions on November 7, committee chairman Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara is expected to submit his report “and we will get right down to the budget deliberations on the floor.”
“I am grateful to all our hardworking senators for ably steering their respective sub-committees and for keeping us track with our budget timeline,” he added.
Once the budget bill is formally endorsed for floor discussions, senators will have two weeks of marathon plenary deliberations to approve the General Appropriations Bill on second and third reading “as early as the third week of November.”
After that, Zubiri said, a bicameral conference committee will follow either on the first or second week of December to iron out the disagreeing provisions in the versions of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
The reconciled version of the measure will then have to be ratified by the two chambers before the final version is transmitted to Malacañang for signing of President Marcos Jr.
The House of Representatives approved its version of the budget measure on September 28.
Zubiri said next year’s proposed national budget will still center on economic recovery and improving revenue collection.
