Senate removes P60-B House realignments from DA, NIA 2024 budgets

The Senate has removed around P60 billion in realignments introduced by the House of Representatives in the proposed budget of the Department of Agriculture-Office of the Secretary (DA-OSec) and the National Irrigation Administration (NIA).

It was Senate Minority Leader Aquilino III who disclosed during the plenary deliberations of the proposed 2024 national budget that the appropriations of the DA-OSec was cut from P114 billion in the House of Representatives version to P92.1 billion in the Senate version.

“On what issues did we disagree with the House? Kasi binabaan po natin ang House version by P22 billion. Malaking halaga po yon. That’s why I just want to ask what are the big shifts po in the budget starting from the House version,” he said.

“That means marami pa palang issues to be threshed out at the [bicameral conference committee level] as far as the budget of the DA is concerned,” he added.

According to Senator Cynthia Villar, who defended the budget of the DA, the P2 billion in the P22 billion are loan proceeds which were realigned by the Senate from the DA-Osec to unprogrammed funds.

“They transferred from the Office of the Secretary to the unprogrammed funds. That’s usually the way they do it here in the Senate. But it’s still there, except that it’s transferred to another account,” Villar said.

For the remaining P20 billion, Villar said the funds were allocated for the Agribusiness and Marketing Services but this was removed from the DA-OSec due to lack of justification for its use.

“The P20 billion was given by the House to AMAS, the Agribusiness and Marketing Services, P20 billion, but they did not explain how it will be spent kaya tinanggal ng Senado ‘yon. So that’s a total of P22 billion,” she said.

Villar also disclosed that the House increased the budget of NIA from P41 billion--the agency’s original proposal--to P81 billion.

The P20 billion increase in the House of Representatives version was also removed because of the same reason.

“The NIA was given by the House an additional P40 billion budget, but there’s no explanation on how the P40 billion budget will be spent. So, the Senate removed that P40 billion,” she said.

“It’s alright to increase their budget but they have to explain how will they spend it,” she said. —LDF, GMA Integrated News