A NEOPHYTE lawmaker on Saturday said the Duterte administration’s high-growth agenda that aims to spread the benefits of a continuously robust economy to all sectors across the country was on course with the President’s signing into law of the P3.35-trillion national “budget for real change” for 2017.
Camarines Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte, a vice chairperson of the House committee on appropriations, said that Republic Act 10924, the first General Appropriations Act under the Duterte administration, had “the hallmarks of a budget for real change that would help the government transform the economy into a truly inclusive one that could be felt by Filipinos not only in Imperial Manila, but across the country’s regions.
“The 2017 GAA will serve as the catalyst that would finally spread the benefits of high growth outside Imperial Manila and other urban centers, given the huge allocation to local government units of close to P500 billion in Internal Revenue Allotment for next year and additional funding for local infrastructure under the Local Government Support Fund, which is close to P24.6 billion,” said Villafuerte, convenor of the House bloc of first-term legislators.
Next year’s GAA allocation of P486.9 billion for IRA, which corresponds to the 40 percent share of LGUs in national internal revenue taxes, Villafuerte said, represented a 13.6 percent increase in the previous fiscal year’s IRA share of P428.62 billion.
Villafuerte noted the IRA’s increase was even much higher than the growth of the 2017 GAA of 11.6 percent.
“The significant hike in the budget for LGUs best illustrates the Duterte administration’s commitment to its 10-point socioeconomic agenda of spreading growth and creating quality, decent-paying jobs for our countrymen living outside Metro Manila,” Villafuerte said.
He added: “The 2017 GAA that President Duterte is set on delivering on his electoral mandate to bring about real change by pursuing high—and inclusive —growth and restoring peace and order.”
Villafuerte noted that to further stimulate the economy and create jobs, President Duterte kept true to his promise of investing heavily in infrastructure, with an allocation of P860.6 billion for the construction of school buildings, road networks, flood control systems, seaports, power supply systems, hospitals, markets, and other public infrastructure.
Moreover, under the 2017 GAA, P45.2 billion has been allotted to the Department of Agriculture and another P9.8 billion to the Department of Agrarian Reform to step up agricultural modernization by supporting agricultural communities and redistributing land to famers, Villafuerte said.
The neophyte lawmaker pointed out that the President, through the cooperation of the Congress, also kept his commitment to make irrigation free for small farmers by increasing the budget of the National Irrigation Administration to P38.4 billion in 2017 to enable it to realize this promise to provide free irrigation.
Villafuerte said the Congress could even help the Duterte administration pursue this commitment to boosting farm yields by passing his measure—House Bill No. 2133—that aims to abolish irrigation fees, restructure farmers’ existing irrigation service dues and convert the NIA into a line agency of the DA.
He also cited the Duterte administration’s commitment under its 10-point socio-economic agenda to make Filipinos globally competitive by increasing public spending on human capital development, as shown by the 26 percent increase in the budget of the Department of Education from P433 billion in 2016 to P544 billion next year.