Binay gets P1M budget increase while Roxas wins an additional P2B

Vice President Jojo Binay will have to contend with less than a million-peso increase in his 2014 budget, while his 2010-era protagonist, now Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas will see an additional P2 billion in his proposed office budget for next year.

The P2 billion is on top of another P5.6 billion boost for the DILG wallet that Budget Secretary Butch Abad has shepherded to his Liberal Party leader, who could possibly face Binay again, this time for the presidential contest in 2016.

The largely ceremonial Office of the Vice President, on the other hand, will content itself with its 2013 allocation of P416.5 million inching to a little over P417 million. Out of that figure, P200 million has already been reserved for the veep’s version of pork barrel, an amount that was thrown in after Binay’s P6 million item for confidential expenses was removed in 2012.

Another office that Binay heads, the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council will again see no budget increase for three years in a row.

A second housing agency that Binay chairs, the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board, has actually seen its operating expenses whittled down from P442 million in 2012 to P251 million this year.

Next year, the DBM ax-wielders plan to chop down the HLURB budget to an even lower P189 million.

As to Roxas, despite the P7.6 billion department-wide increase that he is getting, the planned DILG budget of P99.59 billion for next year is, to be fair to Mr. Korina Sanchez, still nearly P25 billion short from the 2012-era budget of P124.3 billion of his predecessor, the late Jesse Robredo.

Sixty percent of Roxas’ extra P2 billion for next year has been earmarked for the relocation and re-housing of estero and riverbank squatters; it is not immediately clear where the balance of P400 million would go.

Over in Malacanang, P.Noy should be getting a modest P90-million increase for next year, amid cutting down 27 jobs within the Office of the President, under the same budget proposal being deliberated by Congress, which itself is getting a budgetary trim.

While Senate President Franklin Drilon had been quick to seize on the planned P300 million reduction in Senate budget for next year, with another P100 million cut for the House, the putative savings will nevertheless be overcome by the P450-million increase – a dagdag-bawas funding version, if you will – in the congressional pork barrel allocation for 2014.