Cebu City Councilor Raymond Garcia says he is hoping for the supplemental budget 3 to be passed on June 17. | CDN Digital file photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines — Cebu City Council’s majority floor leader, Councilor Raymond Garcia, is hopeful that the three-week-long delayed Supplemental Budget Number 3 (SB 3) of the city will finally be passed on June 17, 2020.
In a phone interview with CDN Digital, Garcia said that the delay in the passing of the P3.3 billion SB3 is attributed to the long discussions of the City Council regarding the barangay situation updates of the pandemic.
These discussions take up almost 50 percent of the time during a council’s regular session. With this, the supplemental budget has been deferred several times.
On Monday, June 15, 2020, Garcia said the committee on budget and finance, which he also chairs, would tackle the specifics of SB3 with the city’s Local Finance and Budget Office.
“We really need to allocate a separate day to tackle the supplemental budget because we simply do not have time during the regular session. So on Monday, all council members are encouraged to be present during the committee hearing,” Councilor Garcia said.
Mayor Edgardo Labella said in recent statements that the SB 3 should be passed as soon as possible as it contains the hazard pay for the city’s frontliners and the budget for the second tranche of aid to the most affected residents during the ongoing pandemic.
Garcia said if the committee hearing would go well, the budget might finally be approved by the next regular session on June 17, 2020.
Read more: Councilor: Cebu City gov’t should be careful in spending amid pandemic
However, the majority floor leader already anticipates some discussions on certain items in the SB 3 that some council members may want to amend or even oppose.
Read more: P240M budget proposed for command center in Cebu City
One of these is the P240 million proposed budget for the city’s 8-story command center, which the opposition party has begun to question publicly.
Still, he is hoping that the discussions on Monday will be favorable to passing the budget on time. /dbs