Not enough funds to address classroom backlog in proposed 2023 budget —DBM

The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) on Friday admitted that the government does not have enough funding under the P5.2-trillion proposed national budget for 2023 to fully address classroom shortage.

"There is a separate budget for school buildings at P13.9 billion, [but] we don't have enough funds to provide for the backlog of the classrooms," Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman said during Day 1 of the budget deliberations in the House of Representatives.

Pangandaman was responding to Gabriela party-list Representative Arlene Brosas, who asked why the proposed 2023 budget only earmarked P13.9 billion for school buildings and P2.5 billion for housing and community facilities.

Brosas said that such amounts are dwarfed by the infrastructure budget for road networks (P429 billion), railways (P105 billion), and right-of-way projects (P28.6 billion).

Brosas then said classrooms and socialized housing should get more funding, given the huge backlog of 40,000 classrooms and 6.5 million housing units.

"Madam Chair, iyong pondo po na ito, why not put it in schools and public housing, or other social services na mas mararamdaman ng ordinaryong Pilipino?" Brosas said.

(Why don't we realign these huge allocations for schools and public housing which have more impact on the lives of ordinary Filipinos?)

Pangandaman said while the budget for the classroom backlog is not enough, the government uses sound methods to maximize the resources it has in addressing backlogs in government infrastructure, including classrooms.

"We already increased the budget for [school buildings] by P3 billion. Madam chair, we also need to take into consideration the absorptive capacity of the agency in the preparation of the budget," she said.

"In preparing the budget, we also consider the fiscal space given to us by the Development Budget Coordination Committee. We have a formula to come up with a budget for each department, and we take into consideration the absorptive capacity of the agencies," Pangandaman added.

Department of Education (DepEd) spokesperson Michael Poa earlier said they don't expect to 40,000-classroom shortage to be fully addressed in 2023.
—KBK, GMA News