THE House of Representatives’ committee on appropriations said Tuesday it will use the country’s Gross National Happiness in crafting the 2018 national expenditure program.
Davao City Rep. Karlo Alexei Nograles, the panel’s chairman, said the government must take into account the level of satisfaction of everyday living as the panel began scrutinizing the Palace’s proposed P3.767-trillion national budget for next year.
Nograles said a country’s GNH was a key instrument in determining the priority programs that should be pursued by the government.
He said his committee would adopt the GNH as one of its major considerations during the 2018 budget deliberations.
“We must fund programs that will make our people happy. Our national programs should be designed to ensure that our people are generally happy with their way of life,” Nograles said.
He stressed the need for the government to employ the “vitality of continuity, viability and synchronicity” of government programs to meet its medium- and long-term development goals in line with the Philippine Development Plan for 2017 to 2022.
“We must make sure that every centavo of taxes collected from the people will benefit the people, especially the poor and long neglected areas of the country,” Nograles said.
He said that, on the macro basis, the proposed P3.767-trillion national budget for 2018 was consistent with the constitutional mandate allotting the largest funding figure for education.
“Next to education is infrastructure development highlighted by the President’s ambitious “Build, Build, Build” program that will not only spur rural development but also create jobs in long-neglected countryside areas,” Nograles said.
During the initial budget deliberations on Tuesday, Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno said the government’s financial program for 2018 was focused on the “efficient and effective delivery of all government services.”
Nograles welcomed National Economic and Development Authority officials led by Secretary Ernesto Pernia over their pronouncement that the country “is expected to remain one of the fastest-growing economies in Asia, next only to India.”