Photo Release

Redirect the 2021 National Budget: Sen. Panfilo Lacson, during the hybrid plenary deliberation Wednesday, November 11, 2020, on the proposed P4.506 trillion national budget for next year, stresses the need to redirect the budget to conform with the signs of the times. He also asked the committee to scrutinize the 2021 General Appropriations Bill (GAB) against the budget philosophies of reset, rebound and recover after illustrating how public funds are wasted in what he calls are skeleton infrastructure projects. Lacson, chairman of the Committee on National Defense, presented pictures of multi-purpose buildings and roads in some parts of the country that remained unfinished even after receiving funding from previous General Appropriations Acts and are also funded in the 2021 GAB. “The reason I’m showing this, I’m glad that Secretary Dominguez is here, is that the Department of Finance is already having a hard time looking for places where to borrow money… and yet we see for ourselves how funds are being wasted,” Lacson said. He also proposed the deletion of the appropriation for multi-purpose buildings under the Local Infrastructure Program and to increase the P2.7 billion allocation in the 2021 budget bill for the construction of evacuation centers and quarantine facilities. (Albert Calvelo / Senate PRIB)