Palace hopes Noy can sign P2.2-T budget bill before yearend

ith the enate s early passage of the national budget, Malaca ang is hopeful that resident Aquino can sign the . -trillion eneral Appropriations Act ( AA) into law before the year ends, as he had done in the past three years.

e will work with leaders of ongress to ensure the timely enactment of the AA for before yearend , as we have done every year since , ” ress ecretary erminio oloma r. said yesterday.

e called the timely passage of the budget measure an essential foundation of good governance in the Aquino administration.”

udget ecretary lorencio Abad hinted earlier at restructuring next year s budget in light of the gargantuan task of rehabilitating areas devastated by uper yphoon olanda.

e pointed out that the . billion in calamity funds proposed for will not suffice,” even if supplemented with the million promised by the Asian evelopment ank. o we will have to reconsider that double it or triple it but it really depends on where we can draw the space to increase the budget for the calamity fund,” he told a news briefing in Malaca ang.

here is a proposal to just set up a rehabilitation and reconstruction fund for the olanda damage, that is something that we are looking at, to see how we can put this in the budget,” Abad explained.

I don t think that the budget process can wait for an assessment to come. o therefore we do have to inject flexibilities within the program appropriations and anticipate in the unprogrammed appropriations how much more funds we need,” he said.

e said that what the national government wants is to introduce qualifications so that ( the calamity fund) use can be undertaken with greater facility rather than going through the procurement difficulties.”

I think, right now, what we need to do is induce some degree of flexibility in the way we can use the programmed appropriations in the budget as well as anticipate events, Abad said.