The 2021 national budget should finance the priority sectors to sustain economic recovery and create more employment, Senator Joel Villanueva said Friday.
Citing the 2021 national expenditure program, Villanueva raised concerns over the marginal increase in the budget of the Labor department, the lead agency in easing the impact of unemployment for domestic and foreign-based workers.
Villanueva, head of the Senate labor committee, said the emergency employment programs might not be enough to tide over the needs of displaced workers.
“Our resource persons earlier mentioned that among the challenges faced by the Build, Build, Build program is the job-skills mismatch because most of our workers who have the experience and the skills we need are working overseas,” Villanueva said.
“Now that most of them have returned home, we should find a way to tap this available resource.”
Villanueva made his statement eve4n as Rep. Edgar Sarmiento of Samar filed a bill that would require the automatic appropriation of at least 10 percent of all funds allotted for infrastructure projects to provide employment to the Filipinos who lost their livelihood because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Sarmiento, head of the committee on transportation, filed House Bill 7591, or the Employment Generation Through Infrastructure Investment Program.
“The bill aims to address two pressing concerns: First, it will address unemployment. Second, it will benefit the community as the infrastructure projects are communal,” Sarmiento said.
Meanwhile, Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte has endorsed a much bigger outlay for the Department of Agrarian Reform in 2021 to establish “mega farms” in a bid to energize agriculture and achieve food security.
Villafuerte moved for an increase of P3 billion to P5 billion in the department’s total outlay so it could carry out its Mega Farms and Food Security Program in 2021.
“If there is one thing that the ongoing global health crisis has taught us, it is the primacy of self-sufficiency as countries isolate themselves and shutter their businesses in a frantic bid to prevent the spread of a highly infectious pathogen,” Villafuerte said.
Villanueva says he will continue to look into the optimal funding requirement for TESDA to reach more beneficiaries, especially displaced workers.
Under the 2021 NEP, TESDA is to be allotted P2.9 billion to finance the TVET scholarship of some 21,233 trainees, and P200 million for about 8,333 trainees in private TVET institutions.
“If we are going to hit our target of 6 to 8 percent unemployment by next year, we should fund programs that are designed to spark and sustain our economic rebound. We cannot stress this point any further: that our budget next year will really make or break our recovery,” Villanueva said.
“This is why we want to scrutinize each agency’s budget and check whether the items in the budget are necessary and up to what extent they will support our economic recovery.”