The House of Representatives will begin next week its plenary discussions on the Palace-proposed P5.024 trillion national budget for 2022.
At the same time, Rep. Eric Yap of the ACT-CIS party-list group said the House leadership will ask Malacañang to certify the bill as urgent in order to pass it on third and final reading by end of September.
Yap, chairman of the House committee on appropriations, said the plenary debates on the money measure will begin on Monday, September 21.
“After the crafting of the committee report, we will make a formal request to the Office of the President to certify the budget as urgent so that we can pass it on third reading on September 30,” he added.
Earlier, Speaker Lord Allan Velasco said the House aims for a timely and decisive passage of the 2022 General Appropriations Act.
“As the coronavirus pandemic drags on and with no end in sight, it is incumbent upon Congress to swiftly pass a national budget that will not only serve as an instrument for development but also as a powerful tool to decisively defeat COVID-19 and rebuild people’s lives and livelihoods,” Velasco said.
Based on the Palace-submitted budget, the education sector, which is composed of the Department of Education, state universities and colleges, and the Commission on Higher Education, got the biggest chunk of the budget with a total P773.6 billion.
The Department of Public Works and Highways comes next with P686.1 billion followed by the Department of the Interior and Local Government with P250.4 billion.
The Department of Health and the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation ranks fourth with P242 billion.
Other agencies in the top 10 or the so-called priority list are the Department of National Defense (P222 billion), Department of Social Welfare and Development (P191.4 billion), Department of Transportation (P151.3 billion), the Department of Agriculture and National Irrigation Administration (P103.5 billion), the Judiciary with (P45.0 billion), and the Department of Labor and Employment (P44.9 billion)
The DBM said the proposed national budget for 2022 is higher by 11.5 percent than this year’s P4.5-trillion fiscal program. It is also equivalent to 22.8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).