THE House of Representatives last Tuesday approved the request of the Philippine Olympic Committee for an additional P650 million for the Philippine Sports Commission’s 2022 budget from the General Appropriations Act.
POC President Rep. Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino, who represents Cavite’s Eighth District, sought the additional budget to fund the training and participation of national athletes to at least five major international competitions.
The Department of Budget and Management appropriated only P175 million for the PSC, a figure that barely cover bare essentials for the government sports agency’s operations for next year.
Tolentino informed the committee of the importance of four major international competitions that are held every four years as necessary to build on the momentum of the multiple medals, specially Hidilyn Diaz’s weightlifting gold in the Tokyo Olympics.
These are the Beijing Winter Olympics (February 4 to 20), Thailand Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games (March 10 to 20), The World Games or TWG (Birmingham, Alabama, USA, July 7 to 22), Huangzhou Asian Games (September 10 to 25) and Shantou Asian Youth Games (December 20 to 28).
In his manifestation during the House committee on finance hearing presided over by Deputy Speaker Rep. Bernadette Herrera-Dy, Tolentino also included the postponed 31st Southeast Asian Games that Vietnam is bound to host also in 2022.
“With due respect to the DBM, we in the POC were not consulted–and again with due respect to the PSC–we were not also asked, as part of planning, on how much is needed to fund our athletes for these major international competitions,” Tolentino said in his manifestation.
“We are protecting and making sure that our qualified national athletes can compete in full force in those four major events that happen only once every four years, plus the SEA Games in Vietnam where we are the defending overall champion,” he said.
Tolentino earlier laid down a budget of P5 million for the Winter Olympics, P150 million for the AIMAG, P10 million for the TWG, P270 million for Asian Games and P15 million for the AYG. The SEA Games budget was pegged at P200 million.
