Do you have an idea how much will be our budget next year? We all know we are still under a global pandemic and there is a new normal that we have to live with. Our health sector is impaired because of the lack of budget given to the Department of Health, which is understandable knowing that the virus just suddenly took over our nation. But now that the deliberation happened with the idea of the pandemic, what changes did our national budget had gone through the hands of the DBM, House of Representative, the Senate and the President?
Based on the current situation of the economy in the midst of this global pandemic, our GDP significantly decreased from all the business affected and the purchasing power of the citizens which means that the expenditure and obligations are greater than the income produced during this time, pushing the government to take loans and borrow from other countries to sustain the needs, especially, medical and social welfare departments of the country. This is time is also crucial to the levied tax on every citizen because TRAIN law continues to be applied.
The proposed national budget this 2021 based on documents provided by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) is P4.506 trillion national budget and this is 9.9% higher than the 2020 budget which amounts to 4.1 trillion and is 21.8% of the gross domestic product (GDP). The growth in the amount is supposed to be allocated to the Build, build, build program of the Duterte administration and the Senate mentioned that this may not equate to the significant increase of the budget of Department of Health .
According to DBM, once again, the educational department including the DepEd, Ched, SUCs and TESDA, have the highest budget allocation which increased from P650.2 billion allocation last 2020 to P754.4 billion for 2021.
The government expects to appropriate an amount P1.107 trillion particularly for infrastructure programs to ace their title “Golden age of infrastructure”
The departments which gets the other big chunk of budget is the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) at P667.3 billion mainly because of the Build build build program of the administration; next is the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) at P246.1 billion; the Department of National Defense (DND) at P209.1 billion, from the increase of their salaries; and the Department of Health (DOH) at P203.1 billion, which is to combat this deadly virus and support the medicine field of our nation and the slowly recover from the damage this pandemic has caused us.
This time, we can really have an idea what are the priorities of the government given that our situation is different from the past years of their administration. What are your thoughts?
Great writing. Nice article.