Villafuerte

2024 budget plan to improve Pinoys’ lives, help PBBM achieve inclusive growth—LRay

December 20, 2023 Ryan Ponce Pacpaco 605 views

CAMARINES Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte on Wednesday said the newly signed Republic Act (RA) No. 11975 will equip the government with a P5.768-trillion national budget that will let President Marcos invest a fairly good deal in social protection, infrastructure, education and healthcare along with other priority programs to improve Filipino lives and energize growth across the country.

“This 2024 GAA (General Appropriations Act) of P5.768 trillion will afford the Marcos administration with a fairly good deal of resources to fund manifold social protection programs for poor and other underprivileged Filipinos as well as invest in infrastructure modernization, education and healthcare, and agriculture and food security leading toward high and inclusive growth,” Villafuerte, National Unity Party (NUP) president, said.

“With this pro-poor, pro-growth national budget plan for next year, the President will get closer to his vision of a prosperous and peaceful Philippines where nobody is left behind,” Villafuerte, once a Deputy Speaker for finance, said.

Villafuerte noted that the 2024 GAA, for one, has doubled the funding for the pension program for elderly Filipinos to P49.8 billion that will enable the government to increase the monthly pension of an estimated 4.1 million indigent seniors from P500 to P1,000.

The CamSur congressman was a lead author of Republic Act (RA) 11975, which expanded the benefits due senior citizens and doubled their monthly pension to P1,000.

To help ordinary consumers reeling from soaring rice prices, Villafuerte said that lawmakers had inserted into next year’s budget law a rice voucher system called Bagong Pilipinas Community Assistance and Rice Discount (CARD) under the Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situations (AICS) program of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD)–in tandem with local government units (LGUs)–that will give 7 million poor families access to affordable quality rice.

He said the DSWD’s AICS was given a higher allocation so the target beneficiaries can get CARD vouchers to buy rice at a discount.

On top of the subsidies for poor families under the DSWD’s Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program (4Ps), Villafuerte said that next year’s outlay includes new financial aid for those whom Speaker Romualdez had called the “near poor,” under this Department’s Ayuda sa Kapos sa Kita Program (AKAP) that will provide about P5,000 for every target-beneficiary earning P23,000 or less per month.

AKAP aims to extend this subsidy to beneficiaries that include factory workers, drivers, construction workers and other persons with blue-collar jobs.

Aside from funding for social protection programs, Villafuerte said the 2024 budget plan has adequate outlays for improving the lives of Filipinos through infrastructure and agricultural modernization, education and healthcare reforms, and business development, among others.

There are outlays needed to stimulate regional development, he said, so that growth is not confined to just Metro Manila and other urban centers.

To bump up farm yields to stabilize the supply of foodstuff and pull down the retail costs of rice and other farm produce, he said that funding for the farm sector includes a P10-billion support program for farmers in the form of production inputs like high-yield seeds and fertilizers and P60 billion for irrigation projects, he said.

Also, additional funds were allocated under RA for the education sector for scholarship and employment training programs plus a voucher system for senior high school students.

There is funding, too, under RA 11975 for specialty hospitals like the Philippine General Hospital (PGH), National Kidney and Transplant Institute (NKTI), Philippine Children’s Medical Center (PCMC) and National Cancer Center (NCC) that will sustain and the Filipinos’ access to free, quality medical care.

He said that to continue providing financial assistance to jobless and low-income Filipinos, he said the national budget has allocations for such projects as the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) and the Individuals in Crisis Situations (AICS).

He said the 2024 GAA has bigger funds for the defense and military establishment for the acquisition of patrol boats and other equipment to beef up our external defense in the face of increasingly dangerous Chinese bullying in the West Philippine Sea (WPS).

Moreover, under next year’s budget program, P1.237 billion-worth of confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) were taken out of civilian agencies not actually dealing with intelligence work and law enforcement, and realigned to security- or defense-related offices in need of such resources, he said.

During the House deliberations on the 2024 national budget bill, the Villafuerte-led NUP was one of the majority parties in the bigger chamber that had backed the realignment of CIF allocations to the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) and other agencies dealing with WPS concerns.

Among the CIF outlays that the House had realigned in its approved version of the budget were those of the Office of the Vice President (OVP); and the Departments of Agriculture (DA), of Education (DepEd) and of Information and Communications Technology (DICT).

Villafuerte also backed the plan by Speaker Martin Romualdez for the House of Representatives to harness next year its oversight functions to check on agencies and projects that received additional outlays under the 2024 GAA, as a way to ensure the quick and efficient execution of funded programs.

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