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President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. joins the second session of the ASEAN-Japan Friendship and Cooperation Commemorative Summit together with other ASEAN leaders in Tokyo, Japan on Sunday, December 17, 2023. Yummie Dingding, PPA pool
MANILA — President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Wednesday signed the Philippines’ P5.76-trillion budget for 2024 into law, describing the measure as “the instrument which tells how the taxes paid by the people will be returned to them.”
The 2024 General Appropriations Act is the government’s “annual social contract with tax payers that what they have paid faithfully will be rebated to them in full,” Marcos Jr. said in his speech during the signing ceremony in Malacañang.
“It details our battle plan in combatting poverty and illiteracy… It is wrong to say that the budget only pays for the overhead of the bureaucracy. It funds the elimination of the problems that we as a nation must overcome,” he said.
The 2024 national budget includes “what we considered to be the means that will boost the physical and human capital of the nation blessed with talent waiting to be tapped with resources,” the Chief Executive said.
Marcos Jr. underscored that while P5.76 trillion may not be enough to fund all the infrastructure and investment needs of the Philippines, his administration turned away from further borrowing funds.
“Like any other country, we are curtailed what we can collect,” he said.
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“We can be reckless take the easy path, borrow… but that is not the kind of inheritance that we will leave those that will come after us,” he said.
Government officials must be reminded to spend their respective funds judiciously and avoid “red tape that leads to underspending and overspending,” Marcos Jr. said.
“The most important budget commandment: We are working for the people not for ourselves. We are working for the country not for ourselves,” he said.
“Honor the taxpayers who make the budget possible,” he added.
Malacañang has yet to release a full copy of the signed 2024 budget, and has yet to respond to queries if the President has vetoed any item on the spending bill that was approved by both houses of Congress.
House Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez earlier said that about 9 percent or almost P500 billion is allotted for aid for some 48 million Filipinos who belong to low-income families.
“We are allocating half-a-trillion pesos, or about nine percent of the national budget, as assistance to the poor and households with insufficient income,” Romualdez said in an earlier statement.
“We are hoping that in some way, we are able to support people who badly need government help to get them through hard times,” he said.
Romualdez stressed that Congress continues to provide funding for President Marcos’s “legacy projects” - Legacy Food Security, Legacy Specialty Hospitals, and Legacy Housing for the poor.
Some P1.5 billion was also allocated for the development and expansion of the airport in Pag-asa Island as a manifestation of the Marcos administration’s determination to assert the country’s sovereignty in the West Philippine Sea, the House Speaker had said.
An additional P800 million is allocated for the construction of a shelter port for fishermen and boats in Lawak, Palawan - the island closest to Ayungin Shoal, he said. — with a report from RG Cruz, ABS-CBN News
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