DBM promised to make Duterte administration as the Golden Years of Infrastructure.
President Rodrigo Duterte’s six-year term will be considered as the golden years of infrastructure.
Department of Budget and Management Sec. Benjamin Diokno said that in tha P3.35 trillion proposed national budget for 2017, P860.7 billion is set aside to built and renovate infrastructures in the whole country.
The proposed budget is higher by 11.6 percent than this year’s budget of P3.002 trillion.
Diokno said that part of the pouring grounds for the budget are road networks, railways, seaports systems and airport systems.
Each legislative district will be entitled to P80 million worth of projects under the Duterte administration, including party-list lawmakers who are supposed to represent marginalized sectors.
The amount is P10 million more than the old “pork barrel” funds of legislators which the Supreme Court prohibited in a 2014 ruling.
The House leadership has said the allocation of funds for district projects cannot be considered “pork” since it is not in the form of discretionary lump sum funds which the SC has prohibited.
The Duterte administration also allotted P31.5 billion budget for the Mindanao Logistics Infrastructure Network, greater than the P19.5 billion budget for this year.
The education sector remains to have the biggest slice of the pie which amounts to P699.95 billion or equivalent of 20.9 percent of the entire budget.
Diokno, on the other hand, defended the increase of allotment for the Office of the President under the proposed national budget.
The leap of the allocation is noticeable which amounted to P20.030 billion compared to the P2.860 budget this 2016.
Diokno said that included in the budget is the P15 billion which will be used in the hosting of the ASEAN 50th anniversary to be held in the Philippines.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a regional organization comprising ten Southeast Asian states which promotes intergovernmental cooperation and facilitates economic integration among its members.
Since its formation on August 8, 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, the organization’s membership has expanded to include Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), and Vietnam. Its principal aims include accelerating economic growth, social progress, and sociocultural evolution among its members, alongside the protection of regional stability and the provision of a mechanism for member countries to resolve differences peacefully.
