Home Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES / FILE PHOTO
MANILA – Speaker Martin Romualdez on Thursday known as on the bicameral convention committee (bicam) to prioritize Filipinos within the 2025 nationwide funds and produce a spending plan that addresses their each day wants.
“We’re all right here as a result of we’ve been trusted with a accountability. Let’s reside as much as that belief. Let’s have sincere, productive discussions, and let’s discover the frequent floor that places the folks first,” Romualdez mentioned on the bicam’s first assembly.
“We owe it to each Filipino who wakes up daily making an attempt to make ends meet, hoping that their authorities has their again. Let’s give them a funds that claims, ‘Sure, we hear you. Sure, we care. And sure, we’re doing one thing about it,’” he added.
Romualdez mentioned the bicam shouldn’t complicate its funds deliberations to reconcile the variations of the Home of Representatives and the Senate.
“Let’s preserve issues sensible and simple. We don’t have to overcomplicate this. Let’s deal with what is going to make the largest distinction for the Filipino folks. The applications that matter, the companies they depend on, and the investments that can transfer this nation ahead — these needs to be non-negotiable,” he mentioned.
Article continues after this commercial
Romualdez reminded the bicam members of the gravity of their job, noting that the funds’s influence “has the facility to both enhance or disrupt the lives of thousands and thousands of Filipinos.”
Article continues after this commercial
“That is no abnormal job. We’re not simply crunching numbers; we’re crafting options to actual issues confronted by actual folks each single day,” he harassed.
Romualdez famous that the Home ensured its funds model displays key priorities, together with meals affordability, job creation, accessible healthcare, improved training, and catastrophe preparedness.
“We centered on what’s pressing: maintaining meals costs down, creating jobs, making healthcare accessible, bettering training, and making certain catastrophe preparedness,” he mentioned. “I’m assured that our colleagues within the Senate share these targets.”
Romualdez expressed optimism that the bicam might bridge the hole between legislative chambers and ship options to urgent wants.
“That is the place we show that we’re able to working collectively, not simply as representatives of our respective chambers however as leaders who genuinely care about the way forward for this nation,” he mentioned.
Whereas the 2 chambers have differing approaches, he highlighted the shared aim of making an inclusive funds.
“The result have to be the identical: a funds that works for everybody — from the farmers in rural provinces to the employees in city facilities, from small enterprise house owners to younger college students dreaming of a greater life,” he mentioned.
“I do know we are able to get this finished, and I do know we are able to do it proper. So let’s get to work,” Romualdez mentioned.
Lifeblood
In the meantime, Home Appropriations Committee chairperson Elizaldy Co highlighted the funds’s crucial function in sustaining authorities operations and advancing important companies.
“This funds is the lifeblood of our nation. It permits authorities to function successfully and ship important companies to the Filipino folks,” Co mentioned.
Co mentioned the proposed funds additionally ensures persevering with progress beneath the Marcos administration’s eight-point socioeconomic agenda, which goals to decrease the poverty price to a single digit and elevate the nation’s standing to an upper-middle-income economic system.
“The Official Poverty Statistics for 2023 present a compelling narrative of progress. Poverty incidence has fallen to fifteen.5 p.c, a big enchancment from 18.1 p.c in 2021. This implies 2.45 million Filipinos had been lifted out of poverty within the final two years,” Co mentioned.
Co additional famous that the variety of food-poor people declined from 6.5 million in 2021 to 4.484 million in 2023, reflecting the direct advantages of socioeconomic initiatives supported within the funds.
“These figures converse loudly of the adjustments within the lives of many poor Filipinos. They’re direct beneficiaries of the initiatives and socio-economic applications we supported on this funds. They symbolize lives modified, households given hope, and communities strengthened,” Co mentioned.
Co emphasised the funds’s function in addressing inflation, local weather change impacts, and offering hope to susceptible sectors.
“By persevering with the socio-economic applications and infrastructure investments on this funds, we are going to profoundly influence each Filipino battling inflation and the influence of calamities introduced by local weather change,” he mentioned. “Extra importantly, this funds will carry hope and optimism to susceptible sectors that look to us for management and assist.”
READ: Japan to rent extra Filipinos — Speaker Romualdez
Because the bicam deliberations progress, Co urged lawmakers to reconcile their variations and align efforts with the administration’s priorities.
Your subscription couldn’t be saved. Please attempt once more.
Your subscription has been profitable.
“Allow us to seize this chance to form the legacy of our collective work—one which displays our shared dedication to construct a stronger, extra equitable, extra resilient Philippines,” Co mentioned.
