Bicol is biggest casualty if budget stalemate isnt ended
Without appropriation, there will be no rehabilitation.

Raising this specter, Sen.Ralph Recto today pressed for an end to the House-Senate deadlock over the P1.126 trillion national budget for 2006, saying that the present state of Bicol, which was lashed by three powerful typhoons last year, is a strong argument for a new budget.

Recto said money for Bicols rehabilitation would come in the form of a P10-billion outlay which Malacanang had requested to be inserted in this years national budget which to date is not yet moving in bicameral conference.

Recovery can only begin if the budget is reconciled. No other people suffer more from its delay than Bicolanos, Recto said.

Fund releases that can be eked out of the now twice reenacted 2005 budget are limited, Recto explained. What is needed is specific appropriation for the big task of bringing Bicol back on its feet.

Recto said if no new budget for this year is in the offing, then the executive and the legislative should start working on a supplemental budget for the rehabilitation of areas hit by typhoons Milenyo, Paeng, Reming, Senyang.

The vacuum should be filled by the supplemental budget. But I hope it wont come to that point, Recto said.

I hope that the House and the Senate can hammer out a new budget . Three natural calamities hit Bicol last year. The fourth one will be a man-made one and that would be the failure of Congress to pass a new budget, he said.

Disaster officials had pegged at P50 billion the damage to agriculture, infrastructure and private the three typhoons had wrought.