GMA asks DBM to submit budget ceiling of each department for 2020

House Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has asked the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to submit to the House oversight committee on the 2020 budget the budget ceilings of each government agency of the proposed 2020 budget.

Arroyo said it was important to determine budget ceilings to prevent the controversy”created by the “failure” of the DBM to disclose the new budget ceiling of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to the House of Representatives during the budget deliberations last year.

“The controversy of the 2019 budget began with the ceiling issue that’s why we need to know the ceiling now. As we understood as it was presented to us in July 2019, the DPWH had a ceiling of less than P500 million but when the GAA came, it was almost 600 million,” she said.

“That’s why we want to be clarified now. That’s something we want to avoid in this coming budget,” the Speaker said.

Arroyo recalled that when the budget was presented to the House of Representatives last year, the DPWH said it had a budget ceiling of P482 billion.

However, when the National Expenditure Program (NEP) was printed and given to the House of Representatives, the DPWH budget ceiling was actually P555 million or a difference of P75 billion.

When Secretary Mark Villar was asked about the increased budget, he told the congressmen that he did not know anything about it, she said.
House committee on appropriations chairman Rolando Andaya Jr. then moved for the itemization and equalization of the P75 billion to comply with the Constitution and the Supreme Court decision, Arroyo said.

However, such move by the House leadership was questioned by the congressmen who were affected by the itemization. The same items were, however, vetoed by President Rodrigo Duterte who said they were not part of the priority projects of his administration.

During the hearing, Arroyo asked when and who determined the increase in the ceiling.
She was told by DBM officials that the ceiling was known as early as June 2018 but that “not everything was not put on paper.”
Arroyo said the DBM should furnish the House the budget ceilings by June 2019.

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