The House of Representatives is set to begin hearings on Thursday on the P5.678-trillion national budget President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr. has proposed to Congress for next year. First to face the House are members of the President’s economic team who comprise the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC).
They are Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman, Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno, National Economic and Development Authority Director General Arsenio Balisacan, and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Gov. Eli Remolona.
The four are expected to brief congressmen on the state of the country’s economy and the macroeconomic assumptions used in putting together the proposed 2024 spending program.
Speaker Ferdinand Martin G. Romualdez said he and his colleagues would want to know from the administration’s economic managers “how the country could sustain its economic growth and how such growth could benefit our people.”
He said many of the poor complain that the economic boom is benefitting only the rich, the big companies, and stock and financial market players.
“The poor say they cannot eat growth. If the majority of our people do not feel our economic expansion, they should at least see it in terms of the proper use of the national budget for social services, infrastructure, education, health, and even direct financial assistance to the poor and other vulnerable sectors,” the House leader stressed.
Thus, House members would like to see increased allocations for these services and pro-poor programs, he added. Romualdez reiterated the House leadership’s commitment to take a close look at the implementation of the new Agrarian Emancipation Law and appropriations for it.
“The law is the hope of more than 600,000 farmers to get rid of over P5 billion in indebtedness that has been hobbling them for years. Now that the law has condoned such debt, we want our farmers to receive support in terms of new credit, inputs, farm equipment, technology, and other assistance so they can recover,” he said.
The Speaker said the law’s beneficiaries are tilling more than one million hectares of agricultural land, mostly devoted to rice production.
“We hope they can increase their yield and their income. We hope as well that they can contribute to our rice sufficiency and to stabilizing rice and food product prices,” he said.
