Aquino signs today ’16 national budget

PRESIDENT Aquino will sign this morning the P3.002-trillion national budget for next year—the biggest so far in the country’s history.

The Department of Budget and Management claims it will support the administration’s inclusive growth agenda.

According to Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, the 2016 General Appropriations Act (GAA) “represents the government’s commitment to invest in people.”

“This is a budget that is twice more than the national budget when this administration took over in 2010. It also provides the highest allocations on social and economic services compared to the budgets under previous administrations,” Abad said in a statement.

Abad said the DBM worked during these past five years of the Aquino administration to make budget information more accessible to the public.

The budget-planning process also closely engages communities, he said.

For instance, Abad cited the Bottom-Up Budgeting program, under which 1,590 cities and municipalities, or 92 percent of the total, participate in “demand-driven” budget planning.

Under the BuB, P24.7 billion will be spent next year to implement 14,000 projects.