COMMITTEES on Trade and Commerce and Ways and Means chair City Councilor George Goking yesterday said the City Council will tackle on first reading today the proposed P7.8 billion annual budget for 2023.
The budget will be worth P7.8 billion, P6.82 more for the General Fund while P977 thousand for the Special Account – Local Economic Enterprises/Utilities.
It only has a P300 million increase compared to the current 2022 budget, according to Goking.
He said the City Council received the letter from Mayor Rolando ‘Klarex’ Uy on October 13, for the approval of the proposed annual budget.
“The city’s executive department wants a bigger budget for 2023,” he said.
Goking said the administration is pushing for a budget of P7.8 billion for 2023, approximately 300 million higher compared to this year’s P7.5 billion.
If approved, this would be the city’s biggest budget to be implemented, according to Goking.
"The proposed budget of the mayor has already been endorsed by the Committee on Budget and Appropriations," said Goking.
Councilor Yan Lam Lim, who now chairs the City Council’s finance, budget, and appropriations committee said the P7.8 proposed budget will only be introduced to his committee today with the guests from the city's department heads.
"It will only be discussed in the regular session (Plenary) for approval once there are no more questions on the proposal," said Lim.
Goking, however, said he is optimistic that the proposed budget as projected by the administration will be attained based on the previous city’s revenues collection, also taking into account the implementation of the "Mandanas Ruling."
“The proposed budget is attainable,” said Goking citing the new comprehensive tax collections to be implemented by the city such as the “Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises" (Create) including the recently proposed modification on zonal valuation in the city.
“At present, the city government has implemented sustainable ‘pro-poor’ policies, especially to stave off the impacts of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic,” said Goking said citing Mayor Uy's report on his first 100 days in office.
According to Goking, going forward into Uy’s three-year terms, his administration will set a solid roadmap for economic recovery that will define his first term in office.
The present development roadmap is clear, ‘Rise CDO’ is not only a list of programs, not just a framework but it is needed to be attained through actual work as reported by Mayor Uy, Goking explained.
During the past three months, he said that the Uy administration has carried out programs to promote participatory governance, as well as instituted policies on security, safety, and human resource development.
Most of the time, however, Uy’s time and attention were poured into the poor in his first 100 days by bringing basic services to the city’s 80 villages with his ‘Klarex nga Serbisyo sa Barangay (KSB),’ a program reaching out directly to the people with ‘Kasalan ng Bayan’ as an added feature.
To address the unemployment problem, the city’s employment office has facilitated a job placement of 5,131 residents, as Uy also reported.
Uy said the initiative reduced the almost double-digit unemployment rate here in 2021, which reached 9.3 percent or around 30,000 unemployed persons, based on data from the Philippine Statistics Authority.
Goking said that other than the approval of the budget, the City Council already approved a P8.2-billion Annual Investment Plan proposed by the City Development Council for 2023.
“The Council also started committee deliberations on the proposed fiscal incentives and economic reforms package, which the mayor had certified as urgent,” Goking said.
Under Uy's administration, Goking said the priority is also given to the implementation of programs and projects in the field of health in the coming year, including measures for recovery from the pandemic, expansion of anti-poverty programs, social protection programs, continuous delivery of households, and titling of the lot.
