Senate begins plenary debates on ₱1.4-T 2020 nat’l budget

The Senate will officially begin today plenary debates on the proposed ₱4.1-trillion national budget for 2020.

Senator Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara, Finance Committee chair, announced this on Sunday, as he assured that the Senate was on track to pass the budget measure based on their timetable.

Angara is scheduled to sponsor the proposed 2020

national spending plan on November 11.

Angara’s panel had earlier vowed to get the General Appropriations Bill (GAB) on President Rodrigo Duterte’s desk by the middle or third week of December at the latest, for his immediate approval and signature.

The senator reiterated it was necessary to pass the 2020 national budget on time to prevent a reenacted budget like earlier this year due to the delay in the approval of the 2019 General Appropriations Act (GAA).

“So critical is the GAA, in fact, that because we failed to pass it on time during the previous budget cycle, the country paid the price. One adverse impact was a slower GDP growth rate in the first half of the year,” Angara said.

The delay in the passage of the national budget affected the construction and repairs of thousands of classrooms, as were the tuition fees of thousands of government scholars nationwide.

Angara noted the opportunity losses in job creation, public administration and defense, wholesale and retail trade, land transport and education sectors as a result of the government working on a reenacted 2019 budget for the first four months of the year.

Back then, the country was on the brink of missing its growth target. Nevertheless, the government’s aggressive catch up spending implemented by key agencies enabled the country’s economy to bounce back and grow by 6.2 percent.

Angara said he believed his colleagues were already cognizant of the pitfalls of a reenacted budget and will work efficiently together to pass the GAB within the given timetable.

“The experience has only underscored that for us to maintain our country’s momentum and upward trajectory, we can afford no more delays, especially when public spending can account for up to 20 percent of the entire economy,” Angara said.

Senate President Vicente Sotto III had earlier said that the bicameral conference committee might convene first week of December to thresh out differences in the budget version of the House and Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel “Migz” Zubiri had also said that the consensus among senators was to approve the budget soonest to avoid a repeat of what happened in the last 17th Congress.

“We are looking at two weeks of budget deliberation. Hopefully, we can approve it on second reading and third reading by Nov. 22,” Zubiri said in a recent interview.