P5-B NegOcc budget for 2022 up for scrutiny

By Dolly Yasa

BACOLOD City – The Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Negros Occidental is set to scrutinize the proposed P5-billion budget for 2022 by the third week of October 2021.

Gov. Eugenio Jose Lacson said they will submit the proposed budget within this week to the SP.

The deadline of submission is on October 15.

Lacson said the provincial government of Negros Occidental expects a P1.4-billion increase in the National Tax Allocation, previously known as the Internal Revenue Allotment, due to the implementation of Mandanas ruling as ordered by the Supreme Court.

The Mandanas ruling is a 2018 Philippine Supreme Court decision asserting that the bases of the computations of the internal revenue allotment (IRA) for local government units (LGUs) are erroneous, thus denying LGUs a just share of the IRA.

The governor said that the proposed budget will be spread out across agriculture, education, infrastructure, especially the health, to ensure sustainability through another year of the pandemic, in case it lingers.”

The Supreme Court affirmed that local government units are entitled to a “just share” from all national taxes collected and not only from the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR).

At present, LGU’s IRA comes from 40 percent of national internal revenue taxes collected by the BIR.

With the Mandanas-Garcia ruling implementation in 2022, it is projected that LGUs will have a 27.61 percent increase in the total IRA shares.

The Department of Finance (DOF) computed an increase of 27.61 percent to the budget that has to be given as a share to LGUs. This is equivalent to a P234.39 billion increase in the funds that will be redistributed to all LGUs in the country, according to the DOF.

The 2021 budget of Neg. Occ. is P4.4 billion.