Congress may ‘restore’ specialty hospitals’ 2023 budget – Recto
DEPUTY Speaker and Batangas Representative Ralph Recto on Tuesday expressed confidence that Congress will restore the recommended budgetary subsidies of four Quezon City-based specialty hospitals facing budget cuts next year.
Recto assured that “if the past will be the guide”, the recommended budget for the Lung Center of the Philippines (LCP), the Philippine Heart Center (PHC), the National Kidney and Transplant Institute (NKTI), and the Philippine Children’s Medical Center (PCMC) in the proposed 2023 national budget will be restored by Congress.
“The yearly ritual is that those tasked to prepare the national budget will propose an amount lower than the current year’s, and then both chambers restore the cuts or even increase the subsidy,” Recto said.
Based on their charters, the four are classified as government corporations, and as such, their appropriations in the national budget are officially called “budgetary support”.
Budgetary support forms part of a recipient agency’s annual operating budget, subject to restrictions, the foremost of which is that it cannot be used for salaries, which must be funded out of operating income.
Recto said from P684 million in the 2022 General Appropriations Act (GAA), the proposed budgetary subsidy for LCP is now P630.2 million.
The amount for the PHC will be P1.76 billion in the 2023 National Expenditure Program or NEP from P1.88 billion in this year’s GAA.
The NKTI will get P1.15 billion in the 2023 NEP, from P1.5 billion in the 2022 GAA.
The PCMC will get P1.15 billion next year from P1.5 billion this year.
Recto said the four hospitals should be “spared of budget cuts, not because these are legacy institutions close to the President’s heart as they were built by his parents, but because these are excellent hospitals our people have come to value.”
