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Senate on-track to ratify
By VANNT EIAI E
p. TIRRAZ()LA
FFI he Senate is eveine the rati-
f I I fi""Lion of the pa]r-trillion
I proposed zozo iudget by
I next.week with minimal
disagreements expected to crop up in
the bicameral conference committee
meetings between lawmakers.
Senate Prbsident Vicente Sotto
III on Tuesday said the chamber may
. most likely approve the final version
of the ceneral Appropriations Bill
(GAB) when they resume sessions
next week, December 9, forsubmis-
sion to President Duterte.
"Yes, we're ontrack.I understand
that in the bicam there will be very
few points of disagreement, so tingin
ko pagbalik namin on the week of the
gth baka maratify namin (we could
ratify it),1' Sotto told reporters in an
interview in Mandaluyong CitY.
The Senate leader was confident
in saying that there would be no
repeat of the impasse between the
Senate andthe House ofRepresenta-
tives over the more than P95-billion
worth of post- ratification insertions
of the latter in the 2019 national
budget.
Senator Ju4n Edgardo I'Sonny'l
Angara, chairman of the Senate
Finance committee and head of
the Senate panel in the bicam, has
yet to report any con/entions in
the two congress chamPers' pro-
posed amendments to the budget'
he said.
"wala naman kaming nakikitang
ganoon (I have not seen anything
Iike that so far). I don't expect
Speaker Cayetano and the chair-
man of the lHouse committee on]
appropriations to do something like
that;rr sotto said.
"AIl is well, everything is fine, "
he added, quoting Angara.
Itwas reportedAngara and House
appropriations committee chairman
Rep. Isidro Ungab met Monday to
initially discuss the conflicting
provisions of the two GAB versions,
as agreed by the 38-member bicam
lPAatr-{*a)
P4.l-trillion
panel last Friday.
Sotto, however, took excePtion
to the statements made bY House
ways and Means committee chair
and AIbay Rep.loey Salceda regard-
ing the Senaters proposed realign-
ments in the 2o20 government
spending plan.
Salcada likened the upper cham-
ber's F235-billion worth of budget
amendments to "dagdag-bawas",
a form of electoral fraud, or vote
padding-shaving. 'o' 'i'
"so I think it's very inappropri
ate to call an am€ndment a dagdag-
bawas. As a matter of fact, mali Pa
nga'yong dagdag-bawas eh, kasi
bawas tapos dinagdag eh (dagdag-
bawas incorrect, because we reduced
budgets from agencies to augment
funds for other programs). To be
very candid about it, mali eh (it's
wrong). I rhink it's very inappropri
ate, " Sotto said.
Sotto also defended the realign-
ment of the F3 billion from the
National Food Authority's (NFA)
palay procurement fund for local rice
farmers to the Land Bank of the Phil-
ippines (LBP), which was proposed
.by Sen. Cynthia villar.
villar, in a phone interview with
the Manila Bulletin Monday, said
the proposed tr-ansfer would also be
for rhe benefit of the rice farmers in
the form of cash assistance worth
F5,ooo. This would be on top of the
aid to be given to farmers displaced
by the Rice Tariffication Law under
the Fio-billion 2o2o Rice Competi-
tiveness Enhancement Fund.
"napakahalaga din ng
"flna,
ginawang amendment ng Ifinance
sublcommittee on agriculture na
nag-agree ang committe on finance
na alisin mo sa NFA ang F3 billion at
ilagayo sa Land Bank(First ofall, the
amendment of the finance subcom-
mittee on agriculture, whichwas ap-
proved by the committee on finance,
to remove the F3 billion from the
NFAtothe Land Bankis an important
move)," Sotto said referring to the
panel chaired by Villar.