BY GILBERT P. BAYORAN
Vice Gov. Jeffrey Ferrer yesterday assured that the proposed P5.7 billion budget of the provincial government of Negros Occidental for 2022, will be approved during the Sangguniang Panlalawigan session next week.
“We are on schedule or even ahead when it comes to budget deliberations and approval,” Ferrer said.
Last year, the SP approved the 2021 budget in the last week of November.
He added that they are also making sure that COVID-19 responses are in place.
“We are in a pandemic, so we would like to make sure that we are responsive to the needs of the people,” Ferrer stressed.
The budgets of the Provincial Health Office and various district hospitals supervised by the provincial government were among the last being deliberated by the SP committee on Finance chaired by Board Member Rommel Debulgado.
It took two weeks for the Finance committee to deliberate the budgets of various Capitol departments and offices.
The proposed P5.7 billion budget for 2022 increased by P1.3 billion as reported by Lacson, due the Mandanas ruling of the Supreme Court which said that requires all collections of the Commission on Customs and other taxes will be included in the computation of the National Tax Allotment (NTA), otherwise known as the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA).
A big chunk of the proposed P5,719,337,346 budget for 2022 will go to Special Purpose Appropriations (SPA) pegged at P2,142,140,592, or 37.45 percent.*
