Health care gets biggest chunk of Capitol’s 2019 budget

HEALTH care services will get the lion’s share of the proposed 2019 overall budget for Cebu province.

On Monday, Gov. Hilario Davide III has endorsed an overall budget of P4.69 billion for the province’s projects, services and operations for 2019.

Of this, health care services got the biggest chunk at P1.48 billion which will be allocated for the operations cost of the four provincial and 12 district hospitals in Cebu and the operations of the Provincial Health Office (PHO).

While the propose budget is higher than this year’s P4.5 billion by 4.2 percent or about P169 million, the appropriation for most offices has stayed more or less the same, said Capitol’s Budget Officer Danilo Rodas.

Rodas explained that a portion of the increase in the budget will go to the adjustment of the salaries of Capitol employees and the newly created offices of the Provincial Tourism (PTO) and the Investments and Promotions Office (CPIPO).

Of the over P190 million budget increase, P136 million is appropriated for the salary increase and the PTO and CPIPO.

The office of the governor got the second highest allocation of P800 million which is higher that this years budget of P735 million or by at least P65 million.

Rodas said the increase in the governor’s office budget will be for the increase in personnel salary, special projects, rehab centers and the P10 million augmentation for the allocation of the Paglaum scholarship program.

The Provincial Engineering Office got a P400 million budget for provincial road network projects and operations.

The budget will be sourced from the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA), local income tax and regulatory fees.

Rodas said the 2018 IRA, which will be the source of about 80 percent of the annual budget, will be at P3.4 billion or P300 million higher than in 2017.