The bicameral conference committee on Wednesday morning approved the P5.024 trillion national budget for fiscal year 2022, that included the inclusion of a P50 billion fund for booster shots and another P50 billion for health workers’ special risk allowance (SRA).
House Committee on Appropriations Chairman Rep. Eric Go Yap revealed that the bicameral conference committee focused on tweaking the 2022 national budget to address Covid-19-related problems as well as hiking the budget for universities.
Yap said the 2022 national budget now includes a P50 billion fund for health workers’ SRA, which he pointed out was absent in the national expenditure program as proposed by the Department of Budget and Management and the Department of Health. Furthermore, he added that some P50 billion budget has been allocated for the purchase of Covid-19 booster shots. However, he explained that the bulk of the funds would be categorized as unprogrammed since the country is receiving a lot of Covid-19 vaccine donations from other countries.
“The house contingent focused on Covid-19 and universities. These are the important things to the House of Representatives especially to House Speaker [Lord Allan Velasco],” he told reporters after the bicameral conference committee meeting.
Yap said they allocated P32 billion for state universities and colleges (SUCs) to help them prepare for the resumption of physical classes.
Yap also disclosed that the bicameral conference committee hiked the budget of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) to P15 billion while they added P3.5 billion for the purchase of more C130 aircrafts.
Yap explained that they have been pushing to restore the original P29 billion budget of the NTF-ELCAC but senators wanted to allocate the fund to other programs of the government. He added that the P15 billion was a compromise made between the two chambers of congress, which he noted was “good enough.”
“It was not fully restored since the senate had different priorities. We want to restore the whole NTF-ELCAC budget but the senators have a wisdom that other agencies need more funds like the SRA,” he said.
Yap noted that the budget allocated for C130 will allow the government to purchase six aircrafts that can be used for Covid-19 related measures like delivery of vaccines.
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