BACOLOD, Philippines – Officials in the Negros Island Region (NIR) have called on Malacañang and legislators to include the newly created region in the proposed budget for 2025, pointing out the oversight.
Local officials said the proposal, submitted by Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman to Congress on July 29, left out the NIR.
An NIR budget, officials emphasized, is crucial for the national government to start establishing a regional center and its offices in the new region.
The P6.3-billion national budget proposal was greenlit by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on July 2, barely a month after he signed Republic Act 12000, the law creating the NIR, on June 13.
Negros Occidental Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson called on members of the House of Representatives from NIR to address the oversight and ensure the new region gets a fair share of the budget.
“Hopefully, they will be able to convince the national government to include the NIR budget now,” Lacson said.
Senator Imee Marcos told a news conference in Bacolod last week that the NIR could end up without a portion of the 2025 national budget for its transition.
“As far as I know, they will finish the 2025 midterm elections first before finalizing the NIR budget,” she said.
Marcos said one option is for legislators to reduce the proposed budgets for the Western Visayas and Central Visayas regions to allocate funds for the NIR.
Before the creation of the NIR, Negros Occidental was part of Western Visayas, while Negros Oriental and Siquijor were political territories under Central Visayas.
She noted that her brother signed the NIR law when the proposed 2025 National Expenditure Program (NEP) was almost complete.
“We need to come up with a game plan to include the NIR in the budget deliberations, even if only for skeletal offices of the most important departments in both Bacolod and Dumaguete cities,” she said.
In an earlier interview, Senator Joseph Victor Ejercito said the NIR should receive a P1.2-billion share of the national budget annually for the next three years based on RA 12000.
Ejercito, the main author of the NIR law, said this amount is intended for a three-year transition for Negros Occidental.
“But such P1.2 billion is nowhere to be found now in the 2025 NEP,” Senator Marcos said.
Negros Occidental 5th District Representative Emilio Bernardino Yulo said the technical working group for NIR, which includes officials from the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) and Department of Budget and Management (DBM), will meet on Friday, August 9, “and hopefully, one of the topics to be discussed is the NIR budget.”
“We need to find money for the NIR, either through a supplemental budget or from the discretionary fund of the President. We need it,” said Frank Carbon, chief executive officer of the Metro Bacolod Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MBCCI).
Negros Occidental Vice Governor Jeffrey Ferrer said, “We are banking on the support of our lawmakers to allocate the budget for NIR.” – Rappler.com