Senate approves $80b budget for 2021

MANILA: With 22 of its members voting “yes” against no objections or abstentions, the Senate on Thursday unanimously approved the proposed $80 billion national budget for 2021 with the “single-minded focus on restarting the economy” amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the recent devastation wrought by the successive typhoons on the country’s main island of Luzon.

The Senate passed the national budget, officially called the General Appropriations Bill with two of the members absent.

They were opposition Senator Leila de Lima who has been detained for her alleged involvement in ilegl drugs and freshman Senator Ronald dela Rosa, the former Philippine National Police chief, who was found positive for COVID-19.

“Hopefully, inside the line items of the budget our own people will see that, indeed, there is a path out of the pandemic and recession and that we are not without hope,” Angara said in a mix of Filipino and English following the bill’s approval.

“While changes were made,” he added, “the goal of making the budget a budget for rebuilding remains our main strategy to rise from last year’s challenges.”

These included increased allocations in the fight to prevent the rapid spread of the virus to hire more workers for contact-tracing and more assistance to government hospitals badly in need of personnel and equipment, hiked assistance to agriculture and thousands of other for victims of the three successive typhoons that brought heavy death and destruction in Luzon and improved security amid the violence posed by Daesh-linked terrorists especially in Mindanao.

Senate President Vicente Soto expressed optimism that Congress could submit the budget to Malacanang Palace for President Duterte’s signature before its Dec.31 deadline.

But before they could do so, Soto pointed out that Senate and House representatives are to meet in a bicameral conference commitee to thresh out their conflicting versions in the proposed budget.