THE SENATE on Tuesday approved on third and final reading a measure extending the availability of the 2019 national budget until December 2020.
With 19 affirmative votes, zero negative and no abstentions, House Bill No. 5437, which was earlier adopted by the Senate Committee on Finance without amendment, hurdled the chamber.
The bill will amend Section 65 of Republic Act No. 1260, or the P3.662-trillion General Appropriations Act of 2019.
“We did this because under RA 11260 or the 2019 GAA and Executive Order No. 91 on the implementation of a cash-budgeting system, all appropriations that were not released, obligated or paid by Dec. 31, 2019 will lapse and revert to the national treasury,” Senator Juan Edgardo M. Angara said in a statement Tuesday.
Mr. Angara also raised the need to extend the validity of the budget, in light of the delay in the enactment of 2019 spending plan due to the months-long impasse between the House of Representatives and the Department of Budget and Management, and later with the Senate.
“Through this measure we would be extending a big helping hand to the Executive Branch which has had to operate during the first few months of this year on a re-enacted budget,” he also said.
Aside from the budget delay, spending was also stalled by the 45-day election ban on project implementation ahead of the May 13 midterm polls.
Moreover, Mr. Angara said without such an extension, programs and projects that will suffer are the repair and rehabilitation of 2,900 classrooms and the electrification of 5,900 schools; funding for infrastructure projects and the acquisition of medical equipment for 2,800 health facilities, among others.
Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph G. Recto supported the bill, which he sees as a measure to speed up spending of the government.
“This bill is more about giving the government the chance to accelerate actual spending and less about giving more time for them to do it,” Mr Recto said in explaining his vote Tuesday.
“It is meant to turbo charge spending and not simply extend period for it to continue with its current sluggish pace because if the velocity and volume of disbursement will remain as is during the extended period then at the end it will not make much of a difference.” — Charmaine A. Tadalan
