BY JOCELYN MONTEMAYOR and ANGELA CELIS
PRESIDENT Duterte has approved the proposed P4.506-trillion budget for 2021 which focuses on efforts to sustain government measures to address the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic through improvements in the health care system, ensuring food security, and investing into more public and digital infrastructure, among others.
The Department of Budget and Management (DBM), in a statement, said it was putting the finishing touches on the proposed 2021 National Expenditure Program (NEP) and other budget documents and will submit the proposal to Congress within the month, or within 30 days from the President’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) which was delivered last July 27.
The proposed national budget was approved during a special meeting between the President and the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) last July 30.
Next year’s national allocation is higher than this year’s budget by 9.9 percent and equivalent to 21.8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. It is also slightly higher than the initial proposal of P4.180-trillion and P4.335-trillion in May.
Crafted under the theme “Reset, Rebound and Recover: Investing for resiliency and sustainability,” the DBM said the proposed national appropriations is consistent with the administration’s goal of saving lives and protecting communities while making different sectors of the economy stronger and more agile.
“The proposed FY 2021 budget aims to sustain government efforts towards effectively responding to the COVID-19 pandemic by focusing government spending on improving our health care systems, ensuring food security, increasing investments in public and digital infrastructure, and helping communities cope and prevail in these trying times, hence, the theme ‘Reset, Rebound and Recover: Investing for resiliency and sustainability,” the DBM said.
“Every peso of the proposed P4.506 trillion 2021 budget went through numerous budget hearings and consultations with the agencies, and levels of scrutiny and approval,” it also said.
DBM Secretary Wendel Avisado had previously said that the bulk of the programs, activities, and projects (PAPs) for 2021 is aimed at strengthening the country’s capacity to address the COVID-19 pandemic by further buttressing the health care system, ensuring food security, enabling a digital government and economy, and helping communities to adjust to the “new normal”.
He said priority was also given to infrastructure projects that will promote better health services, ease of transportation and mobility of essential goods, as well as IT infrastructure that will lead to the establishment of an ICT-enabled government.
To improve the health sector, budget priority was given to the establishment of more health facilities, purchasing necessary hospital equipment, test kits and vaccines, ensuring sufficient and efficient deployment of health personnel to address COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, and sustaining funding for the implementation of the Universal Health Care law.
To address food security, part of the 2021 budget will be spent on ensuring the unhampered movement of agricultural goods and services through efficient transport and logistics systems, as well as to intensify the provision of farm machinery and equipment to farmers and agriculture-based enterprises for their modernization.
Part of the budget next year will also go to assistance to be extended to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) through the MSME Resiliency Program and to the expansion of Shared Service Facilities and Regional Inclusive Innovations Centers, and to the Balik Probinsya program.
The DBM said budget priority was also given to the implementation of the Philippine Identification System to improve the efficiency of government’s social transfer programs, as well as to support programs under the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) aimed at improving ICT facilities, e-learning platforms, and digital upskilling that are critical for online and remote government operations.
